THE INTERESTS of supporters who want to attend the game needs to be protected when scheduling is reviewed at the end of the season, Collingwood chief executive Gary Pert says.
The Magpies drew 28,339 to Sunday's game against the Western Bulldogs, the second lowest crowd Collingwood has played in front of at Etihad Stadium.
Although the crowd was just 3,914 down on the corresponding fixture last season, it was the lowest crowd between Collingwood and another Victorian side since 24,395 watched Collingwood play Geelong at Kardinia Park in round 15, 1999.
However interest in the game remained high with the match being the best rating Sunday game on free-to-air television this season.
Pert said that mix of numbers supported the feedback Collingwood received from its members.
"It was literally a game built for the television broadcast in a lot of ways rather than going to the game," Pert told AFL.com.au.
He said the feedback received from supporters indicated that the venue, combined with it being a Sunday game in the middle of winter and classified as an A-game for ticketing (meaning general admission is limited and pre-purchasing tickets is recommended) made them less likely to attend, even though it was a Collingwood home game.
"It needs to be a year we review at the end of the year," Pert said. "We regularly receive communication from families, from supporters and members who tell us they are not going to as many games because of the scheduling and that is something that we don't believe is good for the game."
The AFL's manager for broadcasting and scheduling, Simon Lethlean, conceded the crowd for the game was below expectation but he suspected the form of the Bulldogs was the main driver of the crowd.
He said the AFL was relatively pleased that the round once again attracted more than 300,000 people to its nine games and that despite the discussion around crowds, the numbers were beginning to stabilise.
After round 13 the number of people attending games in 2014 is up 1.2 percent when compared to the same number of games last season.
Lethlean said it was obvious that improved crowds at Adelaide Oval had driven the increase and the AFL did not shy away from the multiple reasons that might have led to a decline in Victorian crowds this season.
However he denied that the Collingwood-Bulldogs game was scheduled purely to attract a high television audience.
He also made the point that playing games at 3.20pm on Sundays was not particularly unusual.
"It's a lower crowd than we would have liked but again I think it is only four or five [thousand people] off what we would expect from the game. It is a great result that people tuned into it and that is fantastic, but we would have liked 5,000 more people there," Lethlean told AFL.com.au.
AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan has indicated a range of scheduling issues will be examined at the end of 2014.
