Essendon chief executive Peter Jackson said the weekend’s round of matches were further proof that the AFL and Essendon Football Club had made the correct decision in leaving the club’s round nine match at Colonial Stadium.

Jackson was incensed at the reaction to the decision in some media circles suggesting that they simply wanted to sensationalise the issue rather than look at cold, hard facts.

“I wonder if some radio and television journalists bothered to read the statement put out by the club. Their hysterical response to what was clearly a sensible and correct decision is most disappointing. Ratings seem to be put ahead of sensible discussion,” Jackson said today.

Jackson said Hawthorn crowd figures this season suggest their supporters don’t go to away games. Hawthorn’s away matches this season against Carlton, the Western Bulldogs and St Kilda have attracted crowds of 27,593, 34,400 and 37,940 respectively. “That is an average crowd of 33,000 – even if half of those crowds were Hawthorn supporters they are only attracting about 16,500 to away games,” Jackson said.

“If the number of members we normally attract to home games attend the round nine match and we get the average Hawthorn away game support we would have a crowd of about 35,000 which is well short of capacity. We had 18,800 Essendon members go to this corresponding match last season and that number has only topped 20,000 once since we moved to Colonial Stadium,” Jackson said.

“Why would we take the risk of moving the game to Colonial Stadium based on the above figures? They are numbers that some media outlets might wish to consider before they start claiming that only 5000 Hawthorn supporters will be able to go to the match and that the match would have attracted in excess of 70,000 at the MCG.”

“The decision to leave the match at Colonial Stadium is based on the numbers we had in front of us not simply a vague guess at what crowd the game might attract. Crowd figures tend to get inflated – many people were saying the Essendon v Richmond match last Saturday would be a sell-out and it attracted 77,000.”