lachy
Premiership Player
One argument against that is that across the board clubs have more drawing power early in the year when all fans have hope. I haven't checked the records but I'd expect that to be reflected in attendances. If the club has a s**t year (like this year) the best attendances and the biggest opportunities to sell membership will be at the early home games. If two of those games are at Ballarat it puts a slight dent in those opportunities.
That could be one reason to go with one early game and one late one, say Rd 22.
IF and that is a big IF, the AFL is genuine in wanting to assist this venture we could play a 1.10 Sunday game in April and a 1.10 Saturday game on the weekend in may when nearly all local leagues have a bye in May. Also at that stage of the season we will still be live in the race for the finals.
There have been many fantastic suggestions in this thread on how to make it work. My concern is a lot of things that should have been foreseen by our club before jumping into this agreement were not overly complex at all. This is why I come across as negative as these things were not teething problems, they were obvious issues if you genuinely want to grow your club.
IF this is to work there are 5 stakeholders that need to have the same genuine commitment to the project.
- Us to ensure greater community engagement particularly away from game day
- The AFL to schedule the fixture at the optimum time
- The council to ensure facilities they control are up to scratch as well as movement in and out of the stadium. Also, make sure the game day is an event and package it up for a weekend not just game day. It should also look at constructing the train station across form the ground if this is to be the area's sports precinct
- The State government. Fund stage 2 to get the stadium up to AFL standard and minimum capacity of 15,000 with at least 10,000 seats(Instead of having a mound in the outer properer terracing would add capacity at lower cost)
- Public transport providers. Make sure those travelling to the game can seamlessly get to and from the game. The wait after the game at Ballarat station was unacceptable from all reports. I experienced this for our JLT game but at least the weather was good and it was light)
As the club who have signed this agreement BEFORE all of these things were put in place, IF we want this to work we need to be the facilitators between all groups whilst focusing on all other key area's of operation in the club IF we are genuine about the advised benefits of playing 2 to 3 home games i Ballarat as apposed to other alternatives