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1991 crowd figures

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Event Horizon

Event Horizon

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I felt like going back to have a good look into the 1991 season, as it was the first season of supporting North and watching footy in general for me. Just wanted to see how much of it I actually remember.

And one thing that struck me as shocking were the crowd figures. 13k was an average crowd for our Friday night games, and many games between two Melbourne based sides routinely attracted around 15k. Our game against Brisbane at Waverley in round 17 attracted just 7,239!!! It is amazing to think how far AFL has come as a sport, despite continual criticism of the state of the game in the media.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_AFL_season
 
It is the transformation from sport to sports entertainment.

Football is slowly morphing into the WWE.
 
Yeah, that is pretty interesting.

I remember most of those games and thought that some of the crowds were decent at the time, like the Adelaide game where we won by two points and Rock kicked a barrel from outside 50 late on to seal the win.
 

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Dirty_11 said:
Recall a really great Friday night win against the Eagles also. Matty Larkin goal of the year maybe.
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That was my first ever live game.
The crowds weren't crap just in 1991. 1992 and 1993 weren't much better.
 
Event Horizon said:
That was my first ever live game.
The crowds weren't crap just in 1991. 1992 and 1993 weren't much better.
Click to expand...
There was some big Friday night crowds in 93. Carey on fire vs Essendon, Dunstalls late goal to beat us vs the Hawks. Pretty sure they both would have been around the 50-60,000 mark.
 
Dirty_11 said:
There was some big Friday night crowds in 93. Carey on fire vs Essendon, Dunstalls late goal to beat us vs the Hawks. Pretty sure they both would have been around the 50-60,000 mark.
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Yeah, Essendon game was 55k and Hawthorn was 47k.
But there were also games like North vs Brisbane - 8k, North vs Sydney - 9k, Fitzroy vs North - 14k, North vs St Kilda Friday night - just 28k.
 
Off the top of my head we had 6-7k members circa 1991-2 (now over 35k). The population in Melbourne was just over 3M (now over 4M).

You want one more (sad/angry/swear your head off) statistic? We played in EVERY Friday night game in Victoria that year (5), and hosted all but one (4 home games) - plus we played the Ducks on a Friday at the WACA. Six Friday night games when basically every other club in Victoria didn't want to touch them. Makes you want to talk like Christopher Pyne - $#%^s!.

Very different times.
 

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utility said:
Off the top of my head we had 6-7k members circa 1991-2 (now over 35k). The population in Melbourne was just over 3M (now over 4M).

You want one more (sad/angry/swear your head off) statistic? We played in EVERY Friday night game in Victoria that year (5), and hosted all but one (4 home games) - plus we played the Ducks on a Friday at the WACA. Six Friday night games when basically every other club in Victoria didn't want to touch them. Makes you want to talk like Christopher Pyne - $#%^s!.

Very different times.
Click to expand...

If we are getting 5 Friday nights a year I would be content.
 
93 was a great year...the start of 8 very good years, back then every game
I went to I believed we could win, oh the good old days.

I am hoping it is starting all over again :)
 
Was 1993 the year we played Essendon Friday night, and we were up all night then Essendon came back and took the lead in the last, only for us to win by 5 goals?
 
To illustrate how small the crowds were you could hear the players at many games.

My fave 91 story was at Princes Pk playing Fitzroy.

So down the big score board end it comes and Rocky gets bowled over.

Horse runs and grabs whoever by the scruff of the neck and as plain as day you hear him yell 'You Kufing Carnt'.
 
B Tron said:
like the Adelaide game where we won by two points and Rock kicked a barrel from outside 50 late on to seal the win.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure that is the greatest Carey game that no one remembers. My recollection is that he went into the ruck in the last qtr against Mickan and won about 4 critical centre clearances and then went forward to kick a critical long booming goal (possibly to put us in front?).
 

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Pres said:
Pretty sure that is the greatest Carey game that no one remembers. My recollection is that he went into the ruck in the last qtr against Mickan and won about 4 critical centre clearances and then went forward to kick a critical long booming goal (possibly to put us in front?).
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Thought it was Rock who kicked the goal? But yeah, Duck did some awesome stuff from my vague recollections. Big win. I remember being pumped after the game and driving out of the Olympic Park car park I couldn't understand why fellow north supporters were going me shit. Then I realised that my old man had SA plates on the car.
 
utility said:
Off the top of my head we had 6-7k members circa 1991-2 (now over 35k). The population in Melbourne was just over 3M (now over 4M).

You want one more (sad/angry/swear your head off) statistic? We played in EVERY Friday night game in Victoria that year (5), and hosted all but one (4 home games) - plus we played the Ducks on a Friday at the WACA. Six Friday night games when basically every other club in Victoria didn't want to touch them. Makes you want to talk like Christopher Pyne - $#%^s!.

Very different times.
Click to expand...

In 1991 the Bombers moved full time to the G and their then president said they didn't want any Friday night games as the concept would never work.
 

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