Are you sure? 90k. I know Victorians have a reputation for being, shall we say "confident in their own ability to draw a crowd" but I call BS. For one thing football fans hate watching games at Oval venues. I'm assuming you are referring to the MCG. How would the FFA have gone getting a game at that venue in the middle of AFL season even on a Tuesday night, the ground would need to be prepared, meaning no Sunday games - Geez I can imagine the fat man from under Docklands getting his knickers in a twist already! Secondly, the last few Melbourne Socceroos games haven't exactly been oversubscribed.
2012 - WCQ - Aust v KSA, AAMI Pk - 24,240
2011 – IntFr - Aust v Serbia, Etihad – 28,148
2010 – IntFr - Aust v NZ, MCG – 55,659
2009 – WCQ – Aust v Japan, MCG – 69,238
I think this game will get between 30 and 40 k which considering the blanket coverage it hasn't received in the lamestream media, would be considered acceptable by me.

edit: got my facts wrong

I think the point still stands that the Japan game is the biggest of our qulaifiers and has the greatest revenue drawing potential. Playing it in Brisbane means that the FFA will make roughly $2m less on the gate than Sydney or Melbourne. But thankfully, there not short of cast ATM.

I agree with you that our biggest football rivalry is with Japan and given enough time and some proper promotion, might even take on a slight Bledisloe level of cultural importance, assuming of course that the cultural importance of the Socceroos continues to rise. The football fans in this country that I hang out with certainly consider Aus v Japan games to be the biggest. Now the trick is to 'sell' that importance to the general public who have been conditioned to think our biggest rivalries are with England(Cricket) and new Zealand(RL & Rugby) Perhaps hosting the Asian Cup in 2015 will help towards this?

It's the problem when government incentives to play games in your city is determined before the draw is done due to 4-5 year contracts that are in place...

SBS will show tomorrow morning's WCQ against Jordan, albeit on a 1-hour delay. Surely this must foreshadow that the imminent TV rights deal includes SBS in some fashion...

Sweet!

2-1 loss. Thinking that my boycotting of world cups until Blatter goes is not such a bad idea.

Not sweet

fark. Iraq away next. The only mitigating factor for the campaign so far is that we have 3 away games and the 1 home game is against Japan. The reverse fixtures are more comfortable but bloody hell we need to play better.

you didn't lose to new caledonia.

Okay, as far as armchair managers go I'm pretty weak, but it appears that the "development arm" [TM Ange Postecoglou] has more dangerous individuals than the incumbent team. Holger may be giving greater weight to the guys who play together regularly and in his preferred formation. Effectively, the young talented guys are being left out now because they were left out a year ago and it's "too late" to bring them in en masse now...

The game last night effectively against South Korea's B team showed the young guns have potential. It also showed that they have quite a way to go to be considered international standard. At least this is a step up from the A-League Socceroos of a couple of years ago where the players showed in their games against Indonesia and Kuwait that they were not likely to become international standard.

The A-League with its lowly salary cap is doing what is to be expected - improving our depth, but not our elite. This should be good for the world cup - when one of our players go down we'll have about 25 okay players to replace him.

Oman tonight at Homebush. Half-forgot this is on. Straya 2-nil.

well f**k. That was sh*t. Again. sh*t team selection of out of form players, too little creativity and a formation that lacked anyone to control the bloody game (apart from Bresc's cameo). This is like the bloody verbeek era all over again.