THE AFL and Etihad Stadium management have moved to explain the confusion around the ticketing issue at Sunday's St Kilda-Carlton match at the venue. 

Sunday's attendance figure of 47,945 was the biggest crowd seen at Etihad Stadium this season but there were some major problems in filing patrons into the ground for the 1.10pm start time. 

Even as the second quarter of the game started, there were people still queuing up to enter the ground.

AFL spokesman Patrick Keane said the fact the venue had almost double the amount of walk-ups created the delay.

The difficulty was created with the venue selling 10,678 walk-up seats on the day, whereas the stadium usually plans for approximately 6,000.

There were also 1,500 standing room tickets sold once seats had been filled, with seats on level two reserved for season-pass holders. 

Etihad Stadium spokesman Bill Lane encouraged fans to pre-purchase their tickets to avoid queuing in future.

"Every single gate was open and fully staffed," he said.

"There were no system breakdowns, everything worked as it should."