NORTH Melbourne will not be required to play matches on the Gold Coast after this year.

The club is contracted to play at least nine and a maximum of 10 games at Carrara from 2007-2009, but Andrew Demetriou has said the club will be released from its obligations next season.

“They are saying to us they don’t want to play there next year, they want to play as many games in Melbourne as possible, they want to be the North Melbourne Football Club so we respect that,” Demetriou told the Melbourne Herald Sun.

The club receives $400,000 for each match played on the Gold Coast and it is trying to negotiate a way to maintain the AFL funding while playing the three matches scheduled for Queensland next year in Melbourne.

“It will be interesting to see if that is what will happen (North receiving funding),” Demetriou said.

“They have requested for us to assist them with some issues around fixturing and scheduling, which I think we can accommodate them with.

“We will work through those issues with them in the coming months.”

Demetriou admitted that North’s rejection of an offer to relocate to the Gold Coast was always going to mean that its 2008 fixtures at Carrara would suffer.

The Melbourne club has two remaining fixtures to fulfil this year with St. Kilda (round 14) and Brisbane Lions (round 18). A crowd of just 6354 spectators attended their round-eight victory over West Cost at the Queensland venue.

“It is sort of a no-win situation for the Kangaroos and the Gold Coast and the AFL for this year, given we are going to play three Kangaroos games there this year.

“The crowd wasn’t flash the other day, which we were expecting. The St. Kilda crowd, I am sure, will be a lot better.

“We have already sold more corporates for it than we did last weekend, and it’s five weeks out.

“The game against Brisbane will be good because Brisbane is in it.”

However Demetriou insisted that the back-flip on scheduled fixtures in Queensland would not affect the Gold Coast consortium GC17, which has until October to prove it can run a 17th team by season 2011.

“We are where we are but it doesn’t make any difference to us whatsoever as far as planning and our commitment to going forward with GC17.

“They are doing great things with their bid at the moment, probably going a bit better that what even we expected.

“Corporate sales, the amount of people signing up, the amount of interest, all of it has been excellent.

“It doesn’t make any difference. We understand what happened with the Kangaroos … if we got 8000 to the next game (against the Saints) or 9000, we’d be happy and I am sure we will get more to the Brisbane Lions game.”