WSW should be pushing 20,000 every week. No excuses next season, thats for sure. City make no effort to find new fans. 


sounds about right. Friday night in Melbourne in a season where we've played minimal friday night games should bring a good crowd. the partial clash with an AFL game in Adelaide might hurt the numbers there though. 

How can the elite game be taken away from the masses of players?
By definition, the elite game was, is and will always be separate to the masses of players.

ok i would say the pass mark for this week is 

adel vs city 13k 

victory vs wellington 23k

anything less would be disappointing 

I'm not saying that at all.  I am explaining as someone who lived through it all that in Sydney through the take over of football governance in 1957 the migrant clubs effectively took the elite game away from the masses of players in the District Associations and it is this divide between the elite competition and the DA players that still manifests itself in relatively poor attendances in Sydney today.  Starting the NSL in 1977 and requiring the clubs to change their names made no impact on the divide.  Similarly tossing out the old clubs and replacing them with broad based clubs in setting up the A-League has made little difference.  Total attendance at A-League games in Sydney now are very similar to total attendance in the NSL days despite the massive increase in population.  Fixing the attendance problem is not quickly achieved.  The clubs who are now privileged to be the elite here need first to value the fans they have and then market themselves to existing footballers beginning close to their club's home and radiating out from there.  They need to develop strong relationships with the District Associations in their immediate vicinity and the clubs in the DA's competitions with specific intent to develop strong relationships with young players so that those players identify the club as representing them.  etc., etc..

How the code is run is a separate but important issue but in my view the clubs need to do their job in actively valuing their people, their fans and their future by majoring on strong relationships.  Belonging is one of the most basic needs there is and it is a powerful motivator to commit to being together.

How is it their fault. I'd love to stick the boot in but blaming two clubs for the drop is ridiculous. 

I blame WSW and City fans. we will probably get a big spike from WSW initially next year, but that won't last unless they are closer to the top than the bottom. As for City, I'm expecting them to drop further with the addition of WU. 

Disagree.

Packed stadiums look better. A 10k crowd at Knights Stadium looks better than a 10k crowd at Suncorp.

crowds matter for 2 reasons

one, they can can make CLUBS viable - rather than existing on handouts from the FFA.

and two, they improve atmosphere and energy, which can have an indirect impact on the broadcast product. Big crowds look better on tv

Based on what?

A specific calculation or a figure somebody pulled out of their ass in 2004 which has become the benchmark for everything?

The current attendance average which was not deemed acceptable is ~10,500. What you are saying is with a bias draw towards hand picked big games, less games, and the introduction of two metro teams, a reduction in average attendances means we are progressing along nicely

We need a new criteriaafter this new team. It should be up with all the fanfare around such an exciting new team.

It's no longer directly comparable with the new teams coming in. Personally I think the league will be going okay if it can maintain an average above 10k with the addition of the new teams.

Pretty much what the league is living on atm. 

I find this post very confusing. So what you're trying to say is that because something was run so bad for 45 years in the past, it is very acceptable to run football in present and in future in the exact same bad way of the past?

I agree with everything you said there, I'm just confused about this excuse you're talking about. I've done nothing but blame the FFA and likewise with others who posted on this matter. 

I can only talk about Sydney from experience and I wonder why anyone expects there to be a connection between the elite clubs and the 200k players in community football there when for 45 years the state and national league turned their backs on their predecessors and played the game for the "enclaves".  The footballing masses were taught that the elite arm of the game was not for them by the actions of a lot of the elite clubs.

The old adage "get the parents and you'll get the kids" rings true with regard to football attendance in Sydney.  It will take a generation or more to address the lack of connection with the masses playing the game and parents modelling their love of the game at the elite level is the key.

Attendance dropped 2.4% this season.  Thats a reasonable recovery after a poor start to the season.  Let's hope that it was the bottom of the trough and it starts to improve next season.

Every now and then I read a post that mostly nails what people know but can't put their finger on it properly, this is one of those, it resonated with me, bravo.

The excuse that we keep hearing about how hard it is to engage our juniors with our top flight. It’s an epic failure on the part of the ffa imo. I look at the npl currently, South play on Sundays and we can’t even get our own juniors to the games because these kids are playing all over Melbourne on the same day. The ffa’s inability to get these kids to the grounds in the summer months isn’t good enough. I laugh when people say the A league has no clean air because of cricket, tennis, horse racing or whatever other crap is on. Really it’s no factor.

I don't get it, what excuse are you talking about? 

They have been disenfranchised going well back into the NSL days. Do you think kids at games were wearing South Melbourne kits to training before going to an NSL game?

That’s a silly excuse as not much of little johnnys games clash with the largely summer based A league. It’s really only the end of the season. Which imo makes this an even bigger failure as it’s not as if these kids are watching test cricket or bbl.

This post is spot on. There are parents I know that will watch little johnny play football in the morning and then go to an AFL match in the afternoon, but never consider the HAL
because they are disenfranchised.

Well the problem is we have been copying them and NRL.
We're football and as you know football is played all over the world. We don't need a stupid salary cap, or 5 clubs from Sydney and Melbourne and none in places like Canberra, Wollongong, and Tasmania. We don't need stadiums like Marvell stadium and the MCG, we need smaller boutique stadiums, yet all we have done is pretty much the opposite to what we need to do.
Clearly there is a problem with the way football is run in Australia. 
And honestly I couldn't care less about matching AFL crowds, all I hope for is a proper run league with decent crowds. Something we haven't had last few seasons. 

Yeah, the AFL crowds are impressive. Maybe we should copy what they are doing, closed league, fish where the fish are, salary cap.....what about introducing a draft?

The Sydney derby is our biggest game of the year. And we’d all agree that 21k is pretty ordinary. But whatever. 

The Sydney derby is not the biggest game for the AFL - not by a long way. The AFL Anzac game got 92k, so that’d be the comparison if you’re looking for one, but I guess by pointing out obvious facts we must all be secret undercover AFL fanbois 🤣🤣

Every single derby crowd in the A-league was shit this season we can't deny that, however for all 3 games there was legitimate reasons people need to understand. 
Overall we can't hide from the fact our crowds across the league have been down. 
Anyways fuck AFL I'm not defending it, however there's no way we can mock their crowd numbers, not us nor any other codes fans in this country. 

Well, it would be the equivalent of having a WSW Sydney derby in Football of 8k and considering everyone thought 21k was shit, I can only image we should hold this game to similar scrutiny.

 Yeh Union and League crowds are shit, especially considering how long those sports have been around for compared to the A-league but there's no mocking AFL crowds, and that's coming from someone who absolutely hates that sport. 
By the way 29k was lower than the average AFL crowd, but higher than the average Sydney Swans crowd this season so it makes perfect sense doesn't it?

Yeah, sorry, I still don't understand how a derby can draw less than a regular home game?

Please explain AFL fanbois


Some other crowds worth analysing are 10k for the Waratahs massive Parramatta stadium game and 6k for Bulldogs ANZAC match.

Careful. Eldar will jump out from behind a tree and shout “AFL FAN!!!”

😂