I'm not aware of any clubs that have been caught cheating, other than the tanking by Melbourne, Salary Cap rorting by Carlton and Draft Tampering by Adelaide - but I dont see how that would affect the crowds.
Another article today in the Age shows that the TV audience is also down - 9% nationally or 5% in Vic and 15% in Qld - WA is the only one with more watching. This is due to two possible factors - a large % of the fan base are fickle and show no interest when their teams arent winning (15% drop in qld is the example, with the WA audience increasing as a result of fickle slime bandwagoners jumping on board a winning team) and/or an unenjoyable not particularly entertaining game style.
I doubt that stadium uncomfortableness, cold pies, warm beer, weather etc has contributed to the decline in attendance as this has always been the case and to their credit the AFL has taken steps to address that.
So, a combination of timeslots more suited to tv audiences and the evolution to a not very entertaining game style have reduced attendance and an ugly game style has reduced tv audiences.
I think the AFL have acknowledged that time slots need to be more geared toward the attraction of live audiences rather than appeasing the TV rights holders - I have foxtel and this year more than most it appears to me that there are very few matches played at the same time these days, they seem to be alot more staggered so that i can now watch at least 6 or 7 of the nine games live. Problem with that is that probably more than half of AFL supporters only really want to watch their team or a blockbuster, or as in my case have a wife that wont allow you to watch 7 games a week. So that hasnt really worked.
We will see what the fixture next year looks like I suppose to see if the AFL want to do anything about it.
The next point, of course, is that alot fans (if you can call them that) really only want to watch, support and be part of a winning team. 10 of the 18 teams will be losers. So nothing much you can do there - although the number of teams in with a chance of making the eight right up to Rd23 has increased dramatically so equalisation is working.
As for the ugly game style, this is where alot of the debate has been centred around and quite rightly too. If you are a bottom 6 team and have been for a while, you need to develop in stages. Stage 1 is to learn and become consistent in defensive structures and a defensive mindset - you need to minimise big losing margins to instil confidence in the game plan, coach, players and structures, hence Stage 1 - limit the opposition scoring. This process could take a year or two (or in Melbourne's case a hell of a lot longer). Once that is bedded down you can start to work on attack once the defensive side of your game is instinctive. After another year or two working on that, you should be a high scoring finals bound team.
However, Malthouse proved over a long period of time that a miserly defence is more likely to win a GF than an exciting attack. Neesham demonstrated that a zone type defensive structure with a get the ball to space (back, sideways, forwards) to give you time to compose and set up a thrust forward is a winning form of attack - but the turnovers kill you. Clarkson has demonstrated that getting the right balance between the two is unbeatable if you have a team capable of doing it. Problem is the defensive, slow down, force a stoppage and a restart and flooding is providing coaches with wins. It is this that is lowering the fan base. And on this point there will be one million people with 1.5 million different opinions (assuming that half are female, who tend to change their mind alot) on how to fix this.
For mine, I like two ideas that have been floated - Clarkson suggests the way the umpires interpret the current rules should be realigned to the actual intent of the rules and that the rules are currently in place to rectify the issue already. The other is from Gerard Whately who suggests an all in, every option on the table summit take place over the summer to basically put every idea up for discussion and discuss it, with every legitimate stakeholder (coaches, ex-players, experts, AFL boffins, strategists, umpires etc) being involved.
