Well today Essendon and Collingwood get another financial bonanza, major television exposure, sponsorship opportunities, and big game experience for their players, and as usual supporters cry out to share the spoils but in reality for me...they have made this there day and good luck to them. Thinking about what we could do, I thought about what we could do to convince the AFL to give us Good Friday.
The reason is simple...Good Friday presents a big opportunity for a club to respect this day, provide financial opportunity for the Royal Childrens Hospital and obviously get some of the things that I mentioned about financial benefits etc.
The reasons for Richmond to be proactive are many imho but there are important side issues which affect our club on an annual basis that do not affect many other clubs or certainly not as much.
Good Friday in Australia is usually celebrated on Catholic Good Friday. Richmond has a large Greek membership base and therefore we can turnout for the game. A key point here is that usually Orthodox easter falls differently most years and as Richmond ALWAYS suffers at the Gate when Greek Easter is on.
This is an indisputable fact and can easily be verified by our administration. When Greek Easter is on or Orthodox easter- Our attendance falls.
I urge our administration to consider the following- that RFC asks to be the key club on Good Friday. That the Royal Childrens Hospital get say 10% of the gate and that they be allowed to raise funds outside the ground. Further the away club gets 25% of the gate leaving 65% for us. The reason I say away teams is that Im not asking for a non changeable game only that its Richmond vs whoever every year and that the 2nd team is changed yearly amongst the other 9 Melbourne based clubs- giving each of them a go. So 1 year it may be Richmond vs Collingwood but the next year it could be Richmond vs North Melbourne etc. The game would obviously be televised nationally on Channel 7 as part of the fundraising for the RCH.
This proposal is a good idea - everyone gets a shot, everyone gets a go, everyone makes money, Richmond makes the most but does so to get compensated for the losses that occur at Orthodox Easter.
And our club can carry this because we have 30,000 fully paid members and another 8000 other contributors.
