The AFL’s Sunday night experiment is dead and buried, with 10,000 missing fans proving the last nail in the coffin.
The league reacted quickly on Monday after a crowd of only 40,936 turned up for the Collingwood-Carlton game the night before.
It was the lowest attendance for a match between the two teams at the MCG since 1921.
Furious Magpies president Eddie McGuire said his Magpies, as hosts, would demand compensation from the AFL for lost revenue.
A bitterly cold and wet Melbourne night did not help, with the AFL admitting the crowd was 10,000 short of what they had hoped for.
“The impact on attendance does not justify moving matches into this new timeslot and the AFL remains committed to attendances at the ground as critical to our game,” league chief executive Gillon McLachlan said in a statement.
The AFL trialled six Sunday night and six Thursday night matches this season.
The Thursday experiment appears to be working, but Sunday night overall has been a flop.
“We will always look at new initiatives – just as we have done in the past with Friday night and Saturday twilight football,” McLachlan said.
“But match-day attendance is a core ingredient of the success of our game and, in this instance, we acknowledge the very strong feedback from our fans and our clubs in relation to Sunday night football, particularly in Victoria.
“It is the AFL’s view that the trial in 2014 has shown us that there is a place for Thursday night matches as event games in our schedule but there is not the same appetite for Sunday night in the fixture.”
McLachlan said Sunday night matches had rated well on television.
That is cold comfort for McGuire in his role as Magpies president.
“This is one of the greatest (examples of) vandalising of a key event that I’ve seen in years,” McGuire told the AFL website.
“I’m sure I won’t get a letter of an apology or anything else and I don’t care. All I want is the cheque.
“I’m worried it’s probably cost a couple of hundred thousand. There’s equalisation money gone out of the door.
“It’s exactly the way we told them 12 months ago it would be.”
