Courtesy of Twitter: @CherylCritchley

SEN broadcaster Gerard Whateley has taken the MCC to task over the poor crowd attendance numbers at Friday night's Preliminary Final.

Despite just under 95,000 of the seats taken by fans at the MCG on Friday, over 5,000 were left vacant, and most of those were in the MCC areas.

Given the outcry from supporters of both clubs claiming they couldn't get a ticket into the ground, Whateley has asked for the MCC to find a way to fill those seats, even if they are taken by fans who aren't MCC members.

“Is it time for the MCC to take some responsibility to ensure the ground is full when demand is so high and the conventions of the past that they have in place, it’s time to give those up and make sure those tickets are sold either first to your own or to the 50,000 people desperate to be in those last 5,000 seats,” Whateley told SEN’s Crunch Time.

“How would you manage it? That’s for the MCC to decide.

“I think it’s time to rally their membership and say if you want a ticket to get to this game, you have absolute rights to it, but you must have bought them by 2pm Thursday afternoon.

“If you haven’t, we will sell them to the rest of the fans. It’s terrible last night to have 94,959 in and Margaret Court Arena is overflowing with Collingwood fans just wanting to be in the area and can’t occupy those seats.

“It’s a game that should’ve had 100,000 people at it, it falls directly at the feet of the MCC and they have through convention kept this in place.

“It’s totally unacceptable. Those seats have to be filled. It’s not too much to ask their members to commit by Thursday afternoon and then to let the rest of the people fill the last 5000.”

5 COMMENTS

  1. It’s the usual norm,how many block buster, sold out games and fans of those clubs missing out just to look up and see empty seats in the MCC. We are told footy is the people’s game so how about letting them see it.

  2. That’s the privilege of being a mcc member. We can choose to go or not to go that’s why we pay the fees. Easy for Gerard to complain he gets a free seat every week

  3. They are members of a cricket club that runs a cricket ground.
    They pay their fees every year just like footy club members. Sorry but Collingwood and Richmond have 180,000 members between them. A lot of people miss out. The AFL own Marvel Stadium not the MCG.

  4. What an arrogant dismissive attitude the MCC members have twds their ‘entitlement.’ As you say Luke, it’s a cricket club so when cricket is on at the G maybe then they can run it how they see fit. It’s a privilege to host these games, not an entitlement held by some old school club who think they’re better than everyone else. I hope they’re forced to sell the seats as Gerard has suggested and these ‘members’ are forced to rub shoulders with the unwashed public. Might be a reality check.

  5. It’s not going to happen. I’m not a member but I know they have 3 tiers of memberships and the 3rd can’t attend finals. As soon as they lift that the 2,000 odd empty seats will go. This has been a massive beat up.

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