‘Where are you all?’: Cornes rips into ‘pathetic’ crowd turnout for prime-time TigersFox Sports
July 2nd, 2021Port Adelaide great Kane Cornes has labelled the crowd numbers from last night’s Richmond loss to the Gold Coast “pathetic”, with the Marvel Stadium game attended by less than 10,000 patrons.
Both Marvel Stadium and the MCG are currently permitted to host up to 25,000 people as outdoor venues, but Thursday’s game (a Gold Coast home game relocated to Melbourne) managed to attract only 9,327 spectators.
Speaking on SEN’s The Captain’s Run, Cornes said Tigers coach Damien Hardwick and CEO Brendon Gale had only themselves to blame for the poor turnout.
“The supposed Tiger army with its 103,000 membership base has jumped off,” he said.
“To be fair, the moment Brendon Gale and Damien Hardwick whinged about playing at Marvel earlier this year, the crowd were never going to show.
“I do wonder if a bigger Richmond crowd would’ve pulled its side over the line late last night.”
Hardwick complained after the side’s win over GWS back in May that the side “hated” playing at Marvel Stadium as opposed to the MCG, comments he later apologised for.
Cornes said that, despite fans’ potential hesitancy in attending games amid fixture and COVID-19 uncertainty, the turnout for the club with the second-biggest membership base behind West Coast was not good enough.
“The crowd last night was 9,000. Don’t Richmond have 103,000 members? I get the situation that is in front of us and the uncertainty about where games are going to be played, but don’t tell me 9,000 crowd on Thursday night footy indoors is a good crowd. In fact, it’s pathetic,” he said.
“Where have the Richmond fans gone? Why do you refuse to go to the footy? Where are you all? Certainly the Tigers could’ve used your support late in that game when the Tigers were storming home.”
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