http://www.smh.com.au/AFL/AFL-news/p...331-zqp1p.html
Perfect storm forms over AFL
Date
March 31, 2014 - 7:26PM
Rohan Connolly
Senior AFL writer for The Age
The stakes are always high when bitter rivals Essendon and Carlton play each other. But on Sunday, they might be even higher for a third party not aligned with either of the two foundation clubs.
Potting the AFL has always been a popular pastime, but the league is currently copping a hammering - unprecedented even by its standards. Arrogant and out of touch have been popular slurs of late. But now you can add greedy.
Two issues have the football public fuming. One is scheduling, the other is the new variable pricing ticketing system. And when the Bombers take on the Blues at the MCG this weekend, those sore points are set to collide spectacularly.
Sunday's game is another of these 7.10pm kick-off affairs that have already caused all sorts of headaches for children, families or anyone who needs to get up for work on Monday morning.
Carlton fans will be familiar with the difficulties. Its round one game against Port Adelaide at Etihad Stadium started at 7.40pm on a Sunday and attracted just 24,460 fans - 5000 fewer than each of their past three clashes with the Power at the same venue.
Five of the last seven meetings between Essendon and Carlton have drawn crowds of more than 73,000. You can have long odds on a repeat of that.
But of course, TV ratings, with Channel 7 having generously departed from normal Sunday night programming to cover the game, will be healthy. Which, most fans would agree, is all the AFL now seems to care about.
The league, meanwhile, might have snuck variable pricing past the clubs, who will benefit financially, and the football media, which doesn't have to pay to get in, but it was always going to annoy the punters. And with the underwhelming and under-attended start to the season having forced people to look for answers, a perfect storm of sorts has been created.
So let’s have a look. What will those without club memberships who decide to make the effort on Sunday be forking out?
Premium seats will cost adults $60 (up from $45.15 just two seasons ago). And kids? Clearly the AFL figures that being so late, they’re not going to come anyway. Which is why it might get away with charging $20 for the same seats to those aged 6-14 ($10.55 in 2012) and those under six $17 ($8.05 in 2012).
And families? In 2012 they would have forked out $103.10. On Sunday, they’ll be asked for $149.
We know the AFL will accuse us of quoting figures selectively here. And it would never do that itself.
Well, except on Monday when, at midnight, about half-a-day before such information is usually released, but after this writer’s column about fans’ displeasure and poor crowds had been posted online, in came a media release trumpeting the ''third highest total round two AFL crowd on record''.
It highlighted the ''best-ever attendance'' for the Fremantle-Gold Coast and St Kilda-Greater Western Sydney games, which came from a sample of four games and three games respectively. Correctly, it made plenty of the 50,000-plus who turned out to the redeveloped Adelaide Oval for a South Australian Showdown, though neglected to mention the boost the history-making occasion would have given that figure.
And perhaps not so surprisingly, it didn’t mention that Friday night’s Essendon-Hawthorn clash at Etihad Stadium and Saturday night’s Sydney-Collingwood game at ANZ Stadium had drawn fewer people than any previous meetings at those venues, of which there have been eight and 13 respectively.
Another thing football fans have grown to dislike about the AFL is its incessant spin doctoring. This was one of the more transparent examples we’ve seen for some time.
But even Iraq’s infamous information minister, ''Comical Ali'', would have trouble spinning something positive out of a poor crowd at this Sunday night’s Essendon-Carlton game. Because this storm is gathering. And if the league continues to turn a blind eye, it’s going to end up horribly drenched.
