I have a bit of an interest in crowd figures, and I wonder if I am alone in saying that I think 25,000 average crowd is great for our club. Anything above I reckon is a bonus, but I do believe we will continue to grow. After all, we are virtually 1 SANFL club that was promoted into the AFL, and we dont have opposition supporters (like when every Victorian team plays each other) to pull up our av crowds. Why is this something to be ashamed of.
To put it in perspective, here is a list of the 'bigger' English soccer clubs who in the last season, had lower average attendances than us
Crystal Palace
Nottingham Forrest
Southampton
Birmingham City
Bolton
Bradford
Burnley
Charlton Ath
Coventry City
Fulham
Ipswich Town
Leeds Utd
Queens Park Ranges
Millwall
Sheffield Wed
Wolverhampton
Blackburn
Bristol City
Cardiff City
Hull City
Leicester City
Barnsley
Watford
Wigan
Reading
Portsmouth
A few are in the EP, most are in the next div down. I would say that costs for these clubs (ie player payments) would be much larger than AFL, so why are these clubs still happily surviving (must admit some are not going that well), and we are loosing money at AAMI. Something is wrong with our AAMI arangement (as we all know)
Also compared to NRL games, we are fantastic. If the AFL want full stadiums each week, then the AFL should consist of 6 teams: crows, eagles, Collingwood, Carlton, Essendon and maybe Geelong, and cease all other clubs. However would this be very interesting, no way