PAUL ROOS believes the AFL has missed a perfect opportunity to market the game in western Sydney, saying if he were in charge he would be "running around in my car out in Blacktown giving tickets out the window".
The Swans coach's comments come after snail-like ticket sales for Sydney's clash with North Melbourne at ANZ Stadium tomorrow night and the absence of any AFL marketing campaign in the city. Just 16,033 had been sold by 5pm yesterday, and the club's original hopes of 50,000 have had to be reassessed.
As it is a final, the AFL is responsible for marketing and promoting the game, and that has been seemingly non-existent in Sydney this week.
"I haven't seen a lot of marketing, I don't know if there is even any ads on television, but obviously I don't watch television 24 hours a day," Roos said. "There doesn't seem to be a lot on television and so forth but hopefully we'll get a good crowd and people get excited in the next 24 hours and come along and watch.
"You'd like to think there was a big media blitz in terms of TV and radio and those sorts of things that generate some excitement.
"If I was running the AFL and you wanted a second team in Sydney [a western Sydney team is due to enter the competition in 2012], you'd probably be doing as much as you could to make sure as many people turned up, and whether's that giving out free tickets out in Blacktown or whatever, I would have thought you would do everything you possibly could to have 60,000 people there. Now, whether that's giving away 20,000 tickets, so be it.
"You don't get many opportunities to promote the game as you would on Saturday night. I'm just making some statements - I don't know what they have done or what they could have done better - I'm saying it is a great opportunity for the AFL in terms of the second team, and if it was me, I'd be running around in my car out in Blacktown giving tickets out the window because if you are talking about bringing a second team in, you'd be introducing new people.
"If the crowd is 60,000 and you gave away 20,000 tickets, who cares. If you ask me, that's what I'd be doing, but I'm coaching and I haven't got time to drive around and throw out tickets."
The AFL last night claimed it had done its best to promote the game. "Basically, the AFL's entire spend for this weekend has been directed towards this game [Sydney-North], we haven't really done anything for the games in Melbourne," AFL spokesman Patrick Keane said. "The focus has been obviously around our advertising across our three broadcast partners, Seven, Ten and Fox Sports, along with newspaper advertising.
"This game has been far and away our largest commitment, in terms of our advertising for the weekend. There is still close to two days to go until the match actually starts, and we would hope there would be a strong response from Sydney supporters for the last opportunity to see their team in person this year."
Asked if it were perhaps a missed opportunity for attracting the western Sydney market, Keane said: "We've played all our finals at ANZ Stadium in recent years and we've played all the Swans' highest-profile matches. Again, for the opportunity to see Sydney in a major game, this weekend is the last chance for 2008."
With his marketing hat off, and his coaching cap back on, Roos last night confirmed the team of 22 named might not be the one that runs out tomorrow night.
Sydney included Adam Goodes and Ryan O'Keefe after the pair missed last week's win over Brisbane. Heath Grundy and Patrick Veszpremi were the unlucky two to miss out, but Roos said Goodes, O'Keefe and young Craig Bird still had to get through last night's training session.
"If there is any doubt with all three of them, we'll leave it as late as we possibly can, so we may not know until we run out on Saturday night," Roos said.
Meanwhile, AAP reports Swans defender Ben Mathews, 29, has announced his retirement after a 198-game career.
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