Western Bulldogs say poor Ballarat crowd was an anomaly

The Western Bulldogs have described the disappointing attendance at last Saturday’s game in Ballarat as an anomaly.

A section of the disappointing crowd in Ballarat for the Western Bulldogs-Gold Coast match last Saturday.

The Western Bulldogs have described the disappointing attendance at Saturday’s game against the Gold Coast in Ballarat as an anomaly and remain optimistic about their partnership with the regional centre.

But Bulldogs chief executive Ameet Bains said the club would ensure any shortcomings were corrected after a dip in attendance of more than 3000 from their debut match in Ballarat last year.

The Bulldogs play a second home match in Ballarat in round 19 when they host Port Adelaide and are hopeful of drawing a crowd similar to the 10,087 that watched the two sides last August.

Only 6833 fans were at the ground on Saturday in reasonable, if windy, conditions to watch a tight tussle against the Suns.

“It was a little bit disappointing,” Bains said yesterday.

The club has received feedback suggesting the scheduling of matches on Saturday afternoons in Ballarat could be problematic given clashes with regional senior and junior leagues.

That was a point raised by David Clifton, president of Ballarat Football League club Lake Wendouree, in The Ballarat Courier.

Bains said that correlated with the club’s initial findings in a review of the weekend’s match.

“There is a little feedback coming out of the weekend … that suggests that,” he said.

“A lot of local sport, kids’ sport, teenage sport as well — we had the 1.45pm start — so I think it is always difficult when you play and how it is all fixtured, but we still would have liked to have drawn a bigger crowd, regardless of that, given our membership size, travelling down the highway.”

The game against Port Adelaide will be held on Sunday, July 29, with a 3.20pm start.

The Bulldogs, who have committed to playing at least two AFL games annually in Ballarat, had already played a pre-season fixture and an AFLW practice game this year.

Brett Goodes, the former Western Bulldog and brother of Sydney Swans legend Adam Goodes, runs the club’s office in the old gold mining city. A portion of the $500 million investment in the AFL recently by the Victorian government, which guaranteed the grand final at the MCG until 2057, was directed towards Ballarat and Geelong.

Bains said other aspects of the partnership with the City of Ballarat and sponsors in the region were working for the club.

“We’re definitely seeing it as a bit of an anomaly. The other indicators of our growth … have been really healthy,” he told RSN 927.

“There has certainly been an appetite for us. We played an AFLW practice game, a JLT game, had our community camp there, over and above running the community programs.

“We’re really comfortable with the relationship and certainly the way we are received in the community is fantastic. One little hiccup was not getting a full house on Saturday, but we’ll remedy that ahead of round 19.”