Essendon officials are still hopeful of having a free radio broadcast of tonight's blockbuster with Richmond available on the club's official website. Essendon chief executive Peter Jackson spoke with AFL officials earlier today to try and find a way to secure the audio feed and improve the coverage of the match in the northern states of Australia. Jackson said the current situation was ""totally unacceptable"" and that supporters in NSW and Queensland aren't being treated with the respect they deserve.

""This football club works extremely hard to promote its brand and Australian Rules Football in general on the national stage. It is one of the critical challenges facing this competition at the moment yet we have this situation where the biggest game of the round doesn't come on television in NSW and Queensland until just before midnight. These states also have limited radio coverage and that is something we are trying to fix - hopefully before tomorrow night's game. And if we can secure the feed we will provide it to our users free of charge - it won't be part of any subscription package,"" Jackson said.

The Essendon website (www.essendonfc.com.au) is offering live scoring for every Essendon game this season to give northern states' and international supporters the chance to stay in touch with the game as it happens. ""It worked very well against Geelong last week and we got in the region of 17,000 page views so it is obviously a service that people appreciate,"" Jackson said. ""We have had emails from people in the Bahamas, London and interstate thanking us for the service.""

The club also approached Channel 9 in an attempt to get a live feed of this Friday's match into its affilaited football clubs in Brisbane and Sydney. ""We want to get the match shown live into North Shore Football Club and Redland Football Club. We look forward to a positive response but as yet have had no confirmation,"" Jackson said. ""I just want our supporters up north to know we are as disappointed as they are and we will continue to try and rectify the situation as best we can.""