AFLW not ready for Marvel Stadium grand final
Oliver Caffrey |
The AFLW grand final will only be moved to Marvel Stadium when league boss Emma Moore is confident of the decider selling out.
With three of this weekend’s four finals to be held at Ikon Park, the showpiece match of the season is also set to be staged at the 13,000 capacity ground on November 29.
The only way it won’t be at Carlton’s home venue is if the third-ranked Brisbane Lions win their qualifying final and rampaging minor premiers North Melbourne fail to qualify for the grand final.
Since the AFLW moved to starting the season in August in 2022, and finishing in November, the last game of the year hasn’t been played in a stadium.
Fitting AFLW in around cricket, concerts and major events is a major complicating factor.
“When we’re at the stage in the competition where we’ve grown so much that we are bursting out of the venues that we’re playing at, and when we know we’re going to fill Marvel Stadium and create a fantastic grand final experience, that’s when we’ll play at those venues,” Moore said on Wednesday at the AFLW finals launch.
Players are desperate to have more than 12 rounds in a season, with the league setting out ambitious metrics for further expansion.
Clubs took the unorthodox step last weekend of appealing to fans through social media to attend their games because they needed the crowd figures to have longer seasons.
“This is really year zero to one of that strategy where we’re really focused on growth in terms of our fan base as well as on the field,” Moore said.
“We’ve grown this season in terms of what we were going after, and we’ve also seen some really great growth in terms of our AFLW membership.
“We’ve seen growth year on year in terms of attendance.
“We had a really specific approach in our strategy in terms of discovery games, marquee games and priority games for the league … what we’ve seen is somewhere between 27 to 38 per cent growth.”
Moore confirmed the AFLW would again go ahead with a night grand final following on from the first under lights decider last year between the Kangaroos and Lions.
AAP
