I posted a couple of posts on this on bigfooty and got rubbished by the bums who got all defensive but I have done some stat crunching comparing our crowd drawing to theirs in recent seasons and given the song and dance made about their million drawing seasons it makes interesting reading.
This year they drew 80,000 more than us but taking only same opposition in same ground - in other words comparing like with like fixtures - we are actually a couple of hundred a game ahead. We had no second game VS Pies. we had to go to York Park with hawthorn. We had to co to Unskilled with Geelong. In fact we were a bigger draw this year, our 22nd in 24 outside the finals
I did the same exercise for 1998, our best drawing seasason and their all time record season. On the face of it they are 7,000 a game ahead but comparing like fixtures their lead is merely 3,000 a game. We had no second game VS Carlton. We had 4 visits interstate to their 2. We had to go to kardinia. In reality, in a season in which we failed to make the finals for the 15th time in 16 years we were only 3,000 a game off the all time record attendance season.
2001: Coming from nowhere if we had had a late season VS Carlton - as of course Pies and Dons had - we would probably have topped a million.
When the scheduling advantages essendon and collingwood are given because of their success are discounted their lead over us dwindles to a few thousand a game over the past decade.
Conclusion: If we put a few decent seasons together we will draw HUGE. Even stuttering along as we are we are not for off the other 2 and were we regularly in top 4 heaven knows what would happen. If the AFL scheduled us as they do the other 2 and with success they would definitely have us playing them as well as Carlton twice a year and if we got into the "G" more often we would smash records. The stats of recent years indicate that at least.
Lads when the train really rumbles it is going to be massive.