AFL: Record home and away crowd tipped for Carlton v Collingwood
A huge crowd is predicted for the Collingwood and Carlton match-up on Friday. As SHANNON GILL discovers this would break new ground in Victorian football’s biggest rivalry.
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It’s the most storeyed rivalry in Victorian football and this Friday Collingwood and Carlton fans have a chance to be part of the history, with ground officials predicting a record between the two clubs in home and away games.
“It’s certainly looking like a big, big crowd given the matchup. It’s going to be pushing up towards 90,000 I would have thought,” says MCC CEO Stuart Fox.
And while 90,000 would be impressive, it is almost shocking that the two clubs haven’t pulled those sort of numbers before in the regular season.
No games between the two feature in the top 20 home and away attendances in VFL/AFL history. The 88,287 for the Blues’ finals-missing heartbreaker with the Pies in 2022 is the highest home and away crowd the two have ever drawn.
90,000 on Friday would also overtake the last two finals played by the clubs in 1988 and 1984, but the clubs’ records in Grand Finals will likely never be beaten.
In excess of 112,000 people attended each of the clubs’ last three season deciders; including the monolithic 121, 696 at the iconic 1970 Grand Final. It remains the largest stadium attendance for a single day event in Australian sporting history.
There may be a couple of explanations for the home and away anomaly.
Fourteen of the top twenty home and away attendances in VFL/AFL history have come in the last twenty seasons. A time when a redeveloped MCG could seat more than 90,000 with comfort, but also coinciding with the most barren finals-contending period for the Blues in generations.
Yet perhaps more pointedly, Carlton and Collingwood have never owned a particular date or round like other great Victorian-based club rivalries have adopted in recent decades.
Anzac Day (Collingwood v Essendon), Anzac Eve (Richmond v Melbourne), Dreamtime at the G (Essendon v Richmond), Easter Monday (Hawthorn v Geelong), Queen’s/King’s Birthday (Melbourne v Collingwood) and the season opener held by Richmond and Carlton in modern times have become annual clashes that people mark in their calendar year upon year.
The public holiday factor also looms large, with the top nine home and away attendances in VFL/AFL history all falling on public holidays. The only time the two teams have met as a stand alone game on a public holiday was in 1999 when Collingwood was on its way to the wooden spoon, drawing ‘only’ 70,506 on an Easter Monday.
The perennial box office appeal of the two teams has likely meant that creating an annual fixture seem superfluous but the success of all those other games, including the tentative institution of Essendon and Carlton as ana annual King’s Birthday Eve fixture, does make one wonder what could be achieved by creating an event around it inclusive of the two clubs’ long standing commitment to fundraising for the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.
Any chance of moving that pre-Grand Final public holiday back into winter somewhere for them Premier?
Biggest Home and Away crowds – Carlton v Collingwood:
88,287 Round 23, 2022
88,181 Round 3, 2011
86,785 Round 20, 2023
85,936 Round 17, 2011
84,938 Round 17, 2009
Biggest Finals Crowd – Carlton v Collingwood:
121,696 1970 Grand Final
113,545 1979 Grand Final
112,964 1981 Grand Final
112,838 1970 Second Semi Final
108,544 1969 Second Semi Final
Originally published as AFL: Record home and away crowd tipped for Carlton v Collingwood
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