But back in the heyday of the famous ground, which hosted its last VFL game in 1964, more than 10 times that many fans regularly crammed into its rustic facilities.
WATCH: Punt Road memories
The record crowd for a match at the Punt Road Oval was set in round nine, 1949, when 46,000 people watched Richmond go down to Carlton by 15 points.
That day, fans of the Tigers and Blues filled the wooden grandstands on the northern side and stood shoulder-to-shoulder on concrete terracing in the outer.
Gaze across the ground these days and it's almost impossible to imagine such an occasion. However, there are a few long-time Tiger fans who can still remember what those times were like.
One is the club's historian, Bill Meaklim, a sprightly octogenarian who has been a paid-up member of the yellow and black army for 71 years.
"It was a great ground to watch the football at because you always felt so close to the action," Meaklim told AFL.com.au.
"The fact that the Jack Dyer Stand is still there helps keep our memories alive. We had a lot of fun there.
"I can clearly still see this little fella who used to go around with peanuts. He had half a chaff bag filled with little bags of shelled peanuts. 'Thruppence a bag,' he'd yell out."
Meaklim estimates that between 1944 and 1964 he saw 162 games at the Punt Road Oval, although the Tigers were in a trough during most of that time, so they didn't win many of them.
As a young boy, Meaklim sat on the stairs at the front of the Jack Dyer Stand, smelling the liniment as star players like two-time Brownlow medallist Roy Wright and tough-as-nails defender 'Mopsy' Fraser jogged onto the field.
Graduating to the seats in the front rows of the stand was notoriously difficult.
"Alice Wills, who became our first lady life member, she established a volunteer group to support the club," Meaklim explained. "These ladies occupied about the first five rows, in the prime positions, and there was no way you could get in there. She had it under control."
Back then, the surface of the oval was far from the bowling green it resembles today.
"The ground was a quagmire nearly all the time, and the mud had a real smell about it," Meaklim recalled. "Half the ground would have no green on it. There were just a few green islands out there.
"There was no official half-time entertainment, but we had this fella who was a bit of clown. He was quite elderly but quite agile, and he'd spend the first half bending his elbow at the bar at the end of the Dyer stand.
"He used to come out onto the ground at half-time in his overcoat and hat and try to tip-toe from one green bit to the next. The crowd would be going wild, because they knew the police would eventually have to chase him off the ground."
In recent years, Richmond has spent more than $2 million redeveloping the Punt Road Oval, which has included building state of the art gym facilities and enlarging the playing surface to the same dimensions as Etihad Stadium.
It means the Dyer Stand is now the only building left from the days when the Tigers drew 40,000-plus crowds to the venue.
Nevertheless, for Richmond supporters like Meaklim, the practice match against Essendon on Friday will be a trip back in time.
And there will be plenty of similar experiences to come, with the Tigers' new VFL team hosting nine matches at Punt Road this year.
A number of those games will take place in the lead-up to AFL matches involving Richmond across Yarra Park at the MCG.
"I'm very tempted to watch the VFL at Punt Road, then head home and watch the other game on the TV in my lounge room," Meaklim joked. "It's going to be a great thing."
Captain Blood: Richmond skipper Jack Dyer (No.17) was a much-loved - and feared - figure at Punt Road.
Twitter: @AFL_AdamMcNicol
