I've been looking at attendance figure for the last few years and thought people might like to know where we sit.

It's a tight ladder in the middle, and there's a clump at the bottom.

We are obivously not amongst the 'celler dweller' group.

I'd ignore Geelong for this table, given their Kardinia Park arrangements.

Average Home game, non-finals attendance per club, over last five years.

Collingwood 48,503

Essendon 45,527

Richmond 37,553

St Kilda 35,288

Carlton 34,431

Melbourne 33,239

Hawthorn 29,354

Bulldogs 28,297

Geelong 27,694

Kangaroos 27,290

These figures fluctuate wildy for some clubs and there is a lot of movement from year to year. Others, particularly Essendon, have been relatively stable. St Kilda has barely varied since a step up from 29,000 in 03 to it's current numbers.

Melbourne's attendences tell an obvious story - in 2003 and 2007 we failed to pass 30,000, but for the other three years we averaged about 36,000. This is a normal correlation, but still annoying.

For anyone being harassed by Collingwood supporters about 'fairweather fans', just point out that in 2004 and 2005 the Pies average crowd numbers dropped by over 20%. Add that, if the 'official' number of Collingwood 'supporters' turned up at the same rate as Melbourne supporters, their crowd average would be about 120,000! So where are they all? Once again, I declare that Collingwood's number are made up by 'yeah, I heard of AFL, my former housemate told me to go for Collingwood once'.

You'd expect that Hawthorn will climb a bit further if they continue to succeed, although their attendence for 2007 was already 5000 more than their 5-year average, so a lot of that may already have occured.

Carlton are likely to climb, even if they are merely competitive in 08. Hype hype and away! The Blues recorded an even bigger attendence increase in 07 than Hawthorn.

The Bulldogs and the Kangaroos really are in the stink. Each passed 30,000 only once in the five years, the Kangaroos only just.

And just a final note, I didn't have the patience to track down every home game sold to small regional venues, which obviously skews the figures a bit. Hawthorn, St. Kilda, Melbourne, the Kangaroos and the Bulldogs have each sold at least one game away in this time. How much this affects the results is up for debate - Just what would the crowd be like for Kangaroos vs Port at Telstra Dome?

Ps. I was going to do a comparison of finals crowds in the last five years... but there's no sample data for Richmond & Carlton!

I think that, considering we've been one of the most successul clubs over the past decade, those numbers are disappointing. Carlton has been a laughing stock for 5 seasons and are above us, as has Richmond.

Keep in mind when some of those games are on. Its not apples and apples. I wouldnt say those figures are as drastically bad as some might think. They of course could be better.