North Melbourne’s Adam Simpson said he was looking forward to the match.
“It will be good to play in front of a big crowd at the MCG. If we can get 60-70,000 there it would be great,” he said.
“I was pretty impressed with Brent Harvey and the leadership group. They got the players together straight away to set up donations and organised a number of visits up there. We went up and saw the victims and volunteers as well. A lot of things went unnoticed but the club did a lot of work.”
All Emergency Services personnel will be able to collect up to four tickets by showing their identification at marquees that will be outside the MCG.
Bulldogs president David Smorgon said 30,000 members of the Emergency Services would be invited and he was hopeful of getting twice that many through the gate for the match that has been dubbed the Emergency Services Appreciation game.
“Between the Kangaroos and Bulldogs when we played in the late 90s we had over 60,000 people. We would hope this game gets the support of the football public. There is only one other game on in Melbourne that day and together with up to 30,000 volunteers that will get in for free, hopefully we will get a crowd in excess of 60,000,” he said.
“We think this is a very small but important way that the football public, the AFL and all the clubs involved can say thank you to the unsung heroes, the representatives of these organisations that will be recognised all the day.”
Representatives of the 22 Emergency Services organisations will be officially welcomed out to the centre of the oval before the game, while the Red Cross will be collecting donations.
