Thought you said something like that somewhere in ref to WA & SA.

Not for WA which has the Super 14s as well as the Glory

But for SA, its highly questionable for a State Government to spend money on a purpose built 40,000 seat stadium, unless Rudd funds it.

A multi-purpose inner city venue run by a seperate trust is essential for funding and should be influenced by a World Cup being held in Australia...

Full house at Carrara tonight. And the GC club get a profit without even playing!

Why is the capacity at Carrara so low. 10,294 only? The Titans were pulling in 18,000 in 2007 and they did not have 8000 extra temporary seats. Similaryl, the Bulldogs got 21,000 odd there in 2005.

I have thought the same thing, I've no idea, but it was definately full last night thats for sure... Maybe when the Titans were playing I vaguely recall them putting up temporary stands along one side of the ground. Perhaps that would of lifted the capacity somewhat. I do remember afew words being spoken from the AFL when the NRL went to put temporary stands on the ground cos the AFL had spent $1million on making the ground a good playing surface and didn't want it ruined by temporary stands.

Might be a difference in standing room tickets? Well GA tickets anyways. I think they have put some smallish temp stands where there was hills at either end, that has probably reduced the capacity somewhat.

I went to the game last night, and there was no chance you could have fit more than a thousand more people in, if that. All the seats were taken, and the standing room areas looked pretty full.
1 thing I did notice though is that a lot of the standing room areas were flat - you could only have 2 or 3 rows of people standing there. Any more and they couldn't see a thing. They also bolted down seats behind the goals to the terraces, which would have reduced the capacity quite a bit.

While the stands are horseshit, they've made the best of what they've got. There's plenty of land there, and they've surrounded the ground with food and other stalls with nice grass spots and paths. Getting out was a bitch though, took about 5 minutes to get through the 1 gate. Lots of parking around too - it's really needed because the GC public transport system sucks ass. The ads for the game said catch buses, but gave no details of where they were going from on any day of the paper.

I was pretty impressed at how well football in general is followed on the Gold Coast as well - I spent nearly a week there and the Bulletin and the local radio had pretty extensive coverage of the AFL and even quite a few stories on the local league. Even spotted a news story on the NT team playing their first game on the Gold Coast. Probably not quite getting the same level of coverage as the rugby league, but it wouldn't be far off at all, especially given the GC doesn't even have an AFL team yet. Union doesn't get a mention anywhere - which was a bit surprising given the place seemed to be chock full of Kiwis. Maybe they're trying to get away from the game.
Can thoroughly understand why the AFL wants a team there.

The temp seating that the GCT put in held around 2K people. 10K in oval mode is well below capacity, I'd make a conservative estimate that it'd be ~15K.

Capacity is reduced in oval format...

Thing is that they shoved 16.5k into the place 4 year ago for a preseason game.
http://www.austadiums.com/sport/event.php?eventid=3536.
All I can think of in differences is that seating has actually replaced hill space.

Not by half.

Thanks, Rob, for those comments. Good to hear from one who was there. Those who say that AFL will not do well on the GC (Searle, etc) & will always be #4 in Qld should heed your experience of a week there & attending the game!

Before they built that stand on the outer wing to better suit NRL games Carrara used to have grass hills from the fence and then a raised level of seating behind it which went all the way around the outer until the giant advertising hoardings behind the goals.

I'm very curious to know what crowds they would be pulling now if the ground was kept in a more favourable format to AFL viewing with greater space to hem spectators in.

I have just read that the new GC team will play Melb in China before they play in the AFL in 2011. How bizarre!

While that was the attempted jist of the article, the real story is that the AFL would LIKE to play a game in Shanghai at the World Fair in 2010. The Queensland and Victoria governments are sponsoring Australias visit/pavilion at the World Fair, so the AFL automatically thought well lets get a Victoria and Queensland team to play there. Melbourne have toured China before and already created links so they were an obvious choice, and then its a choice of Gold Coast or Brisbane. Gold Coast would probably get smashed as they wouldn't have their whole team on board yet as it would happen in early October IIRC.