10+% bigger than our previous best home crowd against Port in a year where we sit 9th on the home attendance figures.
That includes the sold games with the lowest drawing game of the year (by almost 3000) at a Traeger Park against Gold Coast (5,072) and the 16th lowest crowd against Adelaide at Marrara Oval (12,104). Take out those game completely and we rise to 5th on the home attendance ladder. Substitute our average MGC home attendances against those clubs for a position somewhere in between 9th and 5th (don't have those figures at hand).
Pretty damn good for a team that: finished 14th in the 2016 membership figures, hasn't finished in the 8 for 11 years, hasn't locked them in this year, has lost to teams currently sitting 17th, 14th, 12th, and has a losing balance against the current top 8 teams.
Hard to see a universe in which that attendance should be described as pathetic.
Edit: Collingwood, the other team to play Port at the MCG this year, got a crowd of 35,933 from their 75,000 members. The MCG estimate of 33k for our game was ridiculous (35% greater than our previous best)