AFL chief Andrew Demetriou says the league will consider asking Cricket Victoria to stage the Sheffield Shield final at Etihad Stadium to allow the Richmond-Carlton blockbuster to remain at the MCG for round one next March.
Richmond chief Brendon Gale and his Carlton counterpart Greg Swann united on Friday in their opposition to Demetriou’s suggestion the game could be switched to Etihad Stadium, which has a capacity of around 53,000.
Gale said the Tigers-Blues clash in round one had attracted an average crowd of almost 75,000 over the past six seasons.
Switching the game would leave thousands of fans from both clubs unable to attend the match and this was unacceptable, Gale said.
Demetriou says the AFL is determined to introduce a second bye as requested by the players for 2013.
“We’d like to start the season with a big bang,” Demetriou told SEN Radio.
“In order to do that, we need to start the season a week earlier and a week earlier enables us to trial this two byes for the players.”
Demetriou said one option was staging 18 rounds of nine games and six rounds of six games.
“We’d love to play it here at the MCG. We agree with Richmond and Carlton,” Demetriou said of the stoush between the AFL and two of the most powerful clubs in the competition.
“But the fact of the matter is the ground is not available and if it’s not available, we still need to play these games.
“It’s in Cricket Victoria’s court because they’ve got this stadium (MCG) for that week in case the Sheffield Shield final is played here.”
In a separate interview with Triple M Radio, Demetriou agreed with a suggestion about looking at helping CV to stage the Shield final at Etihad Stadium, which was Melbourne Renegades’ home ground in last summer’s domestic Twenty20 competition.
“If they (CV) wanted to play there we could make it available for them and we could play at (the MCG),” Demetriou said.
“The cost of putting in drop-in pitches would be compensated by a big crowd.
“Yeah I think we would, if we could get three games with 80,000 at the MCG, maybe we’d go to the MCC and see if they’d co-fund it.”
