Absent fans at the MCG for AFL season opener left an empty feeling

The AFL season kicked off with an eerie atmosphere in a crowd-free MCG, which gave us a reminder the game is nothing without the fans.

Without fans, it was a weird opening to an AFL season. Picture: Michael Klein

If Thursday night’s game taught us one thing, it was that the fans make the game.

Don’t get me wrong, having football on a Thursday night to distract us from the coronavirus epidemic wasn’t a bad thing.

While it was hardly a belter of a game to start the season, it was good to have the game we love back.

But the fans’ collective voice was immensely missed.

Richmond played in front of 100,014 fans at the MCG on Grand Final Day last year – just 173 days earlier.

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The first bounce of the Richmond v Carlton season-opening in front of empty seats at the MCG. Picture: Michael Klein

The Tigers’ average home and away crowd last season was 50,835 and Carlton’s average crowd was 39,471.

On Thursday night, the stands at the MCG were as empty as some supermarket shelves.

There were no jungle drums as Richmond ran out onto the ground, no team banners, no roars after goals and no calls of “ball” singing out around the ground.

The lack of a crowd even created other issues – like no one to throw the ball back into play when it was errantly kicked out of bounds.

Club staff – including media managers – were left to run around the empty seats and collect the ball.

The lack of noise made things easier for the interchange benches.

Number boards were largely made redundant by the fact that players could easily yell out to teammates to get off the ground.

And there was another positive in that there wasn’t a pesky seagull in sight given there was no spare chips to pinch.

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The AFL has done remarkably well to start the season.

We all want enough games played to – hopefully – be able to play a finals series and declare a premier at some stage later this year.

We will adjust to the weird reality of not having crowds at matches, at least this side of winter.

But in the past the AFL has been regularly accused of not listening to the fans enough on any number of issues.

It was a stark reminder the AFL needs to improve on that, because without the fans the game is not quite the same.

Originally published as Absent fans at the MCG for AFL season opener left an empty feeling