Melbourne Rectangular Stadium

[Jeffles]

Away derby is a great idea.

[Adelaide_United_Red]

Away derby is a great idea.

Left field idea:

What about promoting it like a day out at Wembley for the Poms?, Host a "derby de tard" at Stadium Australia, give the fans plenty of notice by releasing the fixture earlier than one month before the season kicks off, give them time to make plans to get up to Sydney, see how many potential fans in Western Sydney you can get along to the game. I'm just throwing the idea out there. its 'only' 10 hours by car up the Hume, the clubs/FFA could run cheap buses for the fans. Maybe with sponsorship from tourism NSW, the FFA could sell $10 tickets along the sidelines and keep both ends for the supporters. A show piece game for a city that only tends to turn out in big numbers for 'event' games. If FFA did this they would have to carefully and rationally explain themselves to Melbourne fans to avoid claims of yet more Sydney Bias from College St.

[Simmo79]

2 things:

1. The FFA doesn't do original ideas, let alone ones from left field.
2 Heart v Victory is known as the "Tardby", not derby de tard

[Jeffles]

Left field? It's not even in the same oval. Take Melbourne's two teams from a market that is proven to draw crowds in Melboune and place them 800km away in a venue that has shown little inclination to come out in big numbers for neutral fixtures unless it is world clarsh.

Tardby at Etihad. No need to tweak that.

[Adelaide_United_Red]

2 things:

1. The FFA doesn't do original ideas, let alone ones from left field.
2 Heart v Victory is known as the "Tardby", not derby de tard

I fear you may be right with #1 and I guess you are correct with #2.
It would have been an interesting 'hand grenade' idea to drop at an FFA board meeting though:) I'm LOLing at imagining the tidal wave of indignation that would come out of Tardistan if the FFA dropped this on them;) Tardby at Docklands then, January should be clear of Footy requirements. Might drive over for it if United don't have a competing game. With that many tards in the one place I'll bring my own BA incase the lack of oxygen in the stadium becomes crippling;) Hope I can get it past security in the wake of the Huns scaremongering;)

[hot_dogma]

This is the first time I have seen Morwell referred to as Latorbe Sportsground. Did Lynch pull that name out of his arse?

[cam]

I've heard plenty of crap and plenty of crazy stupid ideas in my life, but Adelaide_United_Red, that knocks out everything in its place. Are you for real? No wonder they call you a piss-ant town!

HD, the venue is officially called the LaTrobe City Stadium , has been for quite a few years now. Would be good to see a game or 2 down there. The Rebels played a pre-season game there, think they got about 3-4,000.

[hot_dogma]

That's what I thought as well. Did a little Google search to see if the local council dropped the naming rights but no it doesn't seem like it.

[skippy]

22,694 crowd for the Storm - Warriers games on Anzac Day is the highest attendance at AAMI since opening a year ago, aside from the A-League derbies and opening games for RL and RU. The next highest attendance was the 20,517 where the tickets were $1. With the attendences between 5k and 20k, I can't help thinking 20-25k would have been a better fit with the occasional A-League derby switched to Etihad a couple of kilometres away.

[Timbo]

22,694? Wow, looked a lot fuller on TV.

Unless the camera side was full I don't know how you'd shoehorn another ~7500 people in there.

[Laz]

Thought more people would of turned up considering the storm were offering a $10 entry fee to anyone that was at the mcg for the coll/ess game .

[Jeffles]

Did the venue close off the upper western stand again? Even if they didn't, the capacity of the venue is reduced. When I was there for opening night last year, there was lots of scaffolding taking up seats for TV cameras. These seats would count in the theoretical capacity of the venue but not in reality, since the camera are always there. I'm ot saying it's taking up many hundreds of seats but it has an impact.

I reckon as a gimmick the Coll-Ess offer doesn't do much. I'd like to see how many people take up the offer. I mean, if you go to a 2pm footy game, you leave your house at 1pm at the latest. If you go to MNF you won't leave the precinct at 9pm. Can you really be arsed going out all day? Even ardent cricket fans battle to do that and the Storm are trying to sell an all day experience to people that don't like the sport as much as cricket goers like cricket.

What if the Storm made the offer to people that weren't fans/members of Coll-Ess?

[Laz]

A few mates went to both and said that they seen a fair few people wearing Coll/ess scarves/hats there, I went to the mcg game but didn't think twice about going to the storm game . Not sure if storm still do this but I know that they used to give afl club members half price entry to their matches.

[Timbo]

Did the venue close off the upper western stand again? Even if they didn't, the capacity of the venue is reduced. When I was there for opening night last year, there was lots of scaffolding taking up seats for TV cameras. These seats would count in the theoretical capacity of the venue but not in reality, since the camera are always there. I'm ot saying it's taking up many hundreds of seats but it has an impact.

The Rebels actually list the capacity of the ground as 29,500 for Super Rugby matches. Could be something to do with it?

[gyfox]

I just came across a photo shoot of this stadium by Dianna Snape. Its worth a look.

http://diannasnape.com.au/cms-sports-ar ... .phps#next

Also by the Snape are aerial pics of the MCG, AAMI and Etihad in this series of Melbourne.

http://diannasnape.com.au/cms-aerial/me ... .phps#next