LAST week, 37,526 fans attended AAMI Stadium (capacity 54,000) to watch a game between Adelaide and Geelong that had no bearing on the final eight. On the same day, Carlton and Melbourne played a watershed game at Optus Oval (capacity 32,500). Top of the ladder a fortnight before, two losses had slung the Demons out of the four. If they lost to Carlton, their double chance would evaporate. As for Carlton, their stakes were much higher. The club had announced its intention to abandon Optus Oval in 2005, leaving Geelong’s Skilled Stadium as the last Victorian suburban venue. If Carlton fans wanted to overturn that decision, they had to flood Optus in sellout numbers. A miserable 22,254 people turned up.

Outside of the Essendon/Collingwood/Carlton encounters, Melbourne crowds often disappoint. Only 27,226 people attended the Collingwood/Port Friday night Dome game on this same weekend. Both teams claim they are the best clubs in the country. With Collingwood’s huge membership and Port as a premiership threat, that attendance stank.

It’s interesting to observe that if Adelaide has crowds of less that 40,000, it starts talking about financial pressure in spite of season ticket sales well over that number. The no-shows at AAMI have a significant effect on SANFL’s distribution at the end of the year. They like us to spend about $10 to $20 a head every time we attend the footy, parking the car, eating chips, pies, ice creams and drinking diet coke, occasionally buying a scarf or making the odd bet. Port’s no-shows have been significant, too, this year. For a team with its foot on the till for the third year in a row, it is disappointing that Port can’t fill AAMI outside of its own Showdown, rarely cracking the 30,000 mark.
Nobody understands Victoria. The reason for South Australian no-shows is not hard to find. The difference between a good and a bumper attendance can be attributed to those crazy football fans who purchase both Adelaide and Port season tickets. I’m one of them, supporting one and attending the other, wanting a weekly fix of top-shelf football. Adelaide and Port should research our madness jointly to establish the exact size of this crossover market. Armed with these figures, which I suspect may be as high as 10,000, both clubs should devise ways to make sure that we attend. A 20 per cent discount for a joint-season ticket would be a brave start. A reward system for attendance, based on smartcard technology, which could give patrons further discounts on their purchase of a joint-season ticket in the following year, or redeemable products, is a more serious marketing initiative. Rather than buying ads which beg season-ticket holders to give their passes to someone else from a sense of loyalty, the concept that patrons may be rewarded for the use of their ticket is one that Adelaide and Port should address right now.

This year, the AFL programmed five rounds of the first six so that Port and Adelaide played on the same day – one at home and one interstate. I attended AAMI during this time, as I always do, but I suspect that 9,999 people began to discover the joy of having a double-header barbecue at home with their friends – chardonnay and shiraz for the Adelaide guests, Woodies lemonade and Coopers for the Port scrubbers, turkey chops, kangaroo steaks, Coorong mullet, Italian sausages, Greek lamb, real bread, tomato sauce and an HD screen and easy chairs under the backyard eaves. One game at noon. The next at 3.20pm. This is the luxurious South Australian-at-home lifestyle we read about. After a few weeks of this, why would good South Australians ever go to AAMI again?

In seven rounds out of 22, Adelaide and Port played on the same day. With two Showdowns, 40 per cent of the minor rounds become an at-home barbecue experience, rather than a trek to the mecca for poor food, tight seats, a formulaic presentation of the best game in the world, queues in, queues out, the tedium of the one-team crowd.

Only the AFL knows why this year they wanted to change the pattern of SA football attendance but we know they released the draft program on the basis of each club only seeing its own matches. Bucky and Triggy did not pick up the telephone and swap notes. Why not? Dumb pride? The failure of two of the smartest men in SA football to compare notes may have cost the SANFL at least a million dollar turnover this year. That’s 5000 people not attending over 20 rounds (sellouts for the two showdowns) and not spending $10 a head.

The AFL played the two SA clubs against each other as suckers and the SANFL failed to protect its interest as the holder of the two licences. Will the SANFL insist that the clubs run the 2005 draft program past them and will the CEOs of the two SA clubs pick up the phone this year?

Why not Neil Craig?
THE appointment of Neil Craig as Adelaide’s fifth coach was a defensive affair. The club apologised for not securing the self-appointed Best Coaching Talent Available Terry Wallace or the quieter Rodney Eade. Wallace withdrew from Adelaide because he wasn’t their automatic choice and flicked Hawthorn because he couldn’t trust their politics. He’s a new type of coach who will hold Richmond to ransom with a tight contract and vast media clout. After seven years with the Bulldogs for 54 per cent wins and seven finals games, God save Richmond because Wallace won’t. There is nothing wrong with Eade, a likeable fellow, but also 54 per cent after seven years with Sydney and eight finals, Eade lacks magic bullets. Ayres, also, has a 54 per cent winning ratio with 12 finals after 10 years with Geelong and Adelaide. Why replace an apple with an apple?

Neil Craig has three years to cut it as the fourth coach after Cornes, Cahill and Williams to begin their AFL tilt in SA. New coaches are rare creations. Unlike Ayres (or Wallace or Eade, if they had been appointed), Craig and the players won’t need two years to establish a workable understanding with the players. I am glad the AFC has created a new coach. Why weren’t they?

Rucci reads strange books
IN a national first, Michelangelo Rucci quoted Jean Paul Sartre in a football column:
“In football, everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.” [The Advertiser, August 23, 2004.]

Bravo! Next, he’ll find the one sentence Kafka wrote about motor car racing, Hemingway’s hidden essay on ten pin bowling, Kerouac’s vast baseball notes, Raymond Carver’s rejection of squash as a legitimate sport, Gavin Malone’s brilliant underwater polo painting and Patrick White’s thoughts about boxing.

Port’s final campaign needs a Sartrian approach. Minor premiers for three years in a row and first round final failures for the last two, the pressure on the coaching panel is immense. Last month, I suggested that Port should concede the home ground advantage for this first round to change the equation in its favour. That option still stands. There’s a second strategy which can be brought into play if Mark Williams has been true to his word about sharing the leadership role during the season.

At the Round 22 post-match conference, Mark can remain flat, saying nothing about next week. He can cut the press conference rudely short. For the rest of the week, Port can train in closed stadia with Mark doing no press. That means no press. Other members of the coaching panel, dullish players and stony club officials can become the public face. On match day, other members of the coaching panel can address the players. This will work if Mark has made it clear that Port’s success is not about him but about the group. Because, possibly, it is only Mark Williams choking at finals.

If he is still the Big Anxious Daddy, needing to win more than coach, Port will fail once again.