McGuire says he will be demanding compensation because of the poor crowd.
Collingwood president Eddie McGuire is angry with the AFL over the low attendance at Sunday’s Magpies-Blues clash at the MCG and says he will demand compensation from sport’s governing body.
The Round 15 clash drew a crowd of just 40,936, the lowest attendance figure for a match between the two clubs at the MCG in 93 years.
On the eve of the school holidays, the Sunday night timeslot was meant as a trial ahead of the next broadcast rights deal, but McGuire said Collingwood had told the AFL of it concerns over the time of the game, whilst adding the disappointing crowd hit the club hard financially.
“It’s exactly the way we told them 12 months ago that it would be. Am I worried at the fact it’s probably cost us a couple of hundred thousand dollars? That’s equalisation money gone out the door,” he said.
“But more importantly for me, somewhere along the line, 35,000-40,000 people have not come to a game that is traditionally a great game. We used to get 40,000 people at Victoria Park.
“I know the AFL are not going to do this next year. But what we’ll do is we’ll take the money out of the AFL executives’ 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.
“We turn up, we’ve got the numbers, we pre-sold a lot of seats, so people have actually paid for their seats and not come. That’s not good for football.
“We’ve been screaming about it since the fixture came out. It won’t happen again. We will never play on a Sunday night in the middle of winter again, but it doesn’t help us or the people who didn’t turn up.”
Collingwood won the match by 15 points, handing Carlton its fifth straight loss.
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