Lazy Sundays

Last Sunday the crowd numbers were down, the crowd atmosphere was suppressed and even the players seemed to be playing like it was a Championship decider in Adelaide.

12,761 soles got up from sunning themselves on their deckchairs and headed into Lang Park for our first game of the season. Last season’s home game drew 16,949, which turned out to be roughly our season average. Last season’s opening home game draw 33% more attendees then this seasons; and is hopefully not an indicator of a downward trend in this season’s attendences. The franchise’s fearless dictator put it down to “the third day in a row that there was a Brisbane national league side playing at home.” Perhaps. Personally I think it’s because in Brisbane Sundays are for lawn mowing.

The weather was glorious. An advertisement for Queensland Tourism attempting to lure southerners north to capture some winter sun and to escape their bitter cold. Queenslanders themselves probably had better things to be doing then attending a football game. I could have been tempted by a poolside martini if my Season Ticket did not beg me on.

It seemed the Queensland players too were thinking of poolside martinis in the opening stanza. Clogs was about half an hour late to a challenge on Christiano which earnt Adelaide their goal. Perhaps the biggest concern however was with the Roar’s bean counters - is this an indication of the average crowd the Roar will pull this season, as was the case with the opening game against Adelaide last term?

Statements from the Roar administration in the past have stated that 16,000 attendees is the breakeven point for the franchise’s books. The poor crowd might have contributed to a black hole of about $80,000 in the Roar’s books. That is assuming that the stated crowd was correct. To my view the attendance looked not many over 10,000.

The Northern Element suffered similarly. Our group was only a fraction of the size and loudness compared to the end of the last season and found it hard to get going. Renowned Saturday night party animals and Monday morning corporate slaves had better things to do then scream and yell on a Sunday afternoon - like lazing poolside while watching the game on Fox Sports. Those that did attend suffered from alcohol absence. Alcohol is like the oil for the Northern Element engine.

The Roar have another clash this Sunday, and the Roar will be hoping that the chance of seeing what an over the hill reformed drug addict looks like will increase numbers. Usually Central Coast are one of our lower drawing games, but the appearance of Bosnich may help swell numbers; the finance people at the Roar certainly will be hoping so. Queensland has four Sunday afternoon games at home this season. The Roar will certainly hope that the opening day trend changes over the course of the season and the large amount of Sunday games do not harm both their crowd averages and gate revenue.