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Ah the AFL, you’ve successfully confused everyone this weekend. The GWS Giants play at home inside Spotless Stadium, but Geelong are moved to the MCG. Why?
Why not move both to bigger stadiums, or keep both at their home grounds? This lopsided booking has a lot of fans scratching their heads.
The Cats have been shifted to the MCG for their semi-final next week to accommodate for a bigger crowd in the finals atmosphere, meaning they’ll be away from their regular home ground at Simonds Stadium.
Simonds has a capacity of approximately 27,000 while the MCG tilts six figures at around 100,000.
Now, Simonds is undergoing some redevelopments to improve the stadium and, more importantly, increase the size to hold 36,000.
Most people would think that was a fair enough decision, allowing for the big game to hit the big parks, but GWS have been allowed to play at their smaller home ground, Spotless Stadium.
Instead of a predicted – and logical considering the Geelong switch – move to ANZ Stadium with a capacity of 83,500 the Giants will play their final at Spotless, with a capacity of just 24,000.
There’s fears that the Western Bulldogs members are being shafted by the plans, with their 40,000-strong membership group being handed only a small amount of tickets for the clash.
Meanwhile, the Cats and Swans have the largest stadium in the country to fill with their faithful, but at the expense of a Geelong home game atmosphere.
It can certainly be argued that Geelong are still in Melbourne and they have the backing of Victoria in general against the invading Swans side, but that begs the question why not do the same with GWS?
If they move to ANZ, or even the SCG, they’ll still be in Sydney and their fans are still technically at home.
It’s just a never-ending roundabout of questions about why one team is here and the other team is there, and the fairness of it all.
Giants CEO David Matthews has taken a different approach to the whole thing, a glass half-full measure if you will, stating: “A month ago they were questioning if we could fill it up, now they’re saying we’re going to overfill it. It’s a fantastic problem to have.”
Matthews also weighed in on the Cats argument.
“Geelong play home games at the MCG and various spots but their ground is under renovation,” he said.
“We’ve finished in the top four, beaten the Sydney Swans and we’re entitled to a home final and that’s at Spotless Stadium.
“We’ve earned the home final.”
A lot of it boils down to numbers, contracts and the aforementioned redevelopments.
If the Cats have been moved, then logic would say that the Giants should move, but we must not forget that GWS are only five years old and their membership and attendances are extremely low compared to the established bigger clubs.
The Giants have 16,000 members in 2016, the second lowest in the league, while the Cats have a pretty handy 52,000.
The Giants, even with the added padding of a Western Bulldogs supporters’ train coming up, simply wouldn’t be able to fill an ANZ stadium that that holds over eighty thousand.
How would that make the AFL look to other codes and potential new fans of the game if their penultimate round of games in a huge finals equation was half empty, with tens of thousands of empty blue seats coming up on TV?
The SCG, with about half the capacity of ANZ, but double that of Spotless, would be a smarter option, but that’s the Swans’ turf. It would be nearly insulting for GWS to be made to play there after beating them last week.
In Melbourne, Geelong and the Swans have over a hundred thousand members between them, and while not every single one of those members is expected to be there, you have to think that much more than 27,000 will be wanting to go to the game.
Simonds just isn’t big enough for a game of this magnitude, between two of the biggest clubs in the competition.
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