Collingwood president Eddie McGuire is upset over the low attendance at Sunday night’s MCG game and says he’ll demand compensation from the AFL.

The round 15 clash which was Collingwood’s home game against arch-rivals Carlton drew a crowd of 40,936. It was the lowest attendance figure for a match between the two sides at the MCG since 1921.

Sixth-placed Collingwood won Sunday night’s game by 15 points to hand the Blues their fifth consecutive loss.

But that was little consolation for McGuire.

“This is one of the greatest (examples of) vandalising of a key event that I’ve seen in years,” McGuire said.

“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.”

McGuire said he would be on the phone at 9.01am on Monday.

“What we’ll do is take the money out of the AFL executive’s bonuses, those who did it, and send it to the Westpac Centre because at nine o’clock and one second tomorrow, I’m going to be on the phone saying compensation,” McGuire told afl.com.au.

“You want to be entrepreneurs, you carry the downside.”

AFL spokesman Patrick Keane said the league had hoped for a crowd of 50,000.

“Our figures from tonight show that between the two clubs, there’s about 13,000 reserves seat holders who didn’t turn up,” Keane said.

“The clubs get the money for those people but from our point of view, we want the people to attend.

“We’ve said quite consistently this year we’re trialling a number of slots, Thursdays worked really well, Monday only had the one game and the crowds have trended down in the last couple of years.

“Sunday night hasn’t had the response in the same way Thursday has.”