The decision to scrap Thursday night football for the next seven weeks is a move that “doesn’t make any sense”, according to Fox Footy’s Garry Lyon.
Lyon called on the AFL to “give the people what they want” after the opening five rounds drew an average Thursday night crowd of almost 50,000.
“There’s a rhythm that’s come to this footy season … we just get into the rhythm – we get used to the Thursday night. Now it stops really abruptly,” he lamented on AFL 360.
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“The AFL’s got a habit of – they do a lot right – but the continuity, game time starts … it doesn’t make any sense does it?
“We’re going to start with six Thursday nights, give it a spell for seven and then come back again.
“(Start times) That’s a raffle as well! Just turn up sometime after six and you’ll be a chance!”
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Co-host Gerard Whateley said the lack of Thursday night football “confounds” him given the success it has enjoyed – including a whopping 88,084 crowd for the Round 1 opener between Richmond and Carlton at the MCG.
“Seven straight weeks without Thursday night after having a terrific run with it at the start of the year,” he lamented.
“It’s a great sporting night. It gives you that taste of the weekend a fraction early.
“We’ve had thumping good crowds at most of the fixtures we’ve had.
“It feels like a million people every week tune in.
“Why would we leave this property vacant?”
Whateley called on the AFL to be “agile” and “nimble” given there’s now no Thursday football until Round 13, while the back end of the season hasn’t been locked in.
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“The infernal climbing over each other of games which annoys the hell out of me on Sundays and it becomes a real logjam for games on Saturday as well,” he said.
“Give the people what they want! Football.
“We should rectify it in the back end for this year because there’s a whole set of rounds that haven’t been pinned – and they do say they start Friday nights.
“Once we go back to Thursday nights (in Round 13), we should just stay there.”
AFL fixtures boss Travis Auld did concede there was a growing interest in Thursday night football that made it a “compelling” timeslot.
“When you now look at the crowds and the ratings, it’s too compelling to only have 10, 11, 12 of them,” he said of the season’s Thursday fixtures.
Lyon said under the new broadcast deal, they’d be more Thursday night games coming our way.
“I think it’s going to be a really permanent fixture.”
