R1 vs Melbourne City | Sat 8 Oct | 7.35pm | Westpac Stadium

Last year we know that there were fan campaigns to buy more tickets, and a lot of people on here were pretty open with scanning tickets for people who weren't coming. I doubt it was the club or stadium orchestrating it if the numbers were that far out.

As far as yesterday, it was deceptive because people were spread out around the stadium. I doubt the large scale purchasing and scanning of redundant tickets are still happening.

In general humans are not really good at seeing things and eyes can be easy fooled, never trust an eye witnesses. Counting and numbers pretty much the same. I trust the official numbers more than your observations, don't take it personal, it's evolution, or lack of.

To be fair, isn't Parkhouse a striker playing leftback?

and was dealing with a pretty impressive Kamau

From my vantage point in front of my TV I saw people sitting where I've scarcely seen anyone previously. So I think it was a better than average crowd at least.

Krishna to Rogerson and all is changed: changed utterly.

Except some people in the course of their employment are specifically trained to be observant and take in details... Policemen for example...Pilots are another.

Jeez this is a boring argument.

Whilst some cricket groundsman who should be able to calculate crowd numbers, actually attends the game is not observant but relays information apparently gleamed from others who attended the game.

Poets? Pikelets?? Violets???

Queues inside and out did not suggest 10,000.

But , whats more the point is how many real and paying customers will there be next time? Yeah we know the all whites were out, but by and large the young and newbies did okay and kept us in the game.

Our so called experienced players were woeful (apart from Khrishna and Moss) and its virtually unwatchable to turn up and see this narrow nonsense where we have to play the ball through the penalty circle in order to score. It was as slow and predictable as the last two or even three years.

Even with 10 men, we could not dominate the midfield.

Are you saying several thousand jumped the fence to get in?

Yes, he was boo'd, and yes, it was bad taste.  But then the team were boo'd at the final whistle which is even worse taste

I wanted to boo City, and I imagine that many people were, but booing Manny was disturbing.

I was watching the game and as soon as Manny got some boos I knew some wet lettuce would be on here complaining about it. I don't know Manny at all but I am fairly confident that he would not give a flying fudge about being boo'd

There were also sporadic efforts of "Manny Muscat baby" that I could hear. Good on him and I wish him good fortune. He played with heart & gave 100% (Even if sometimes over the top) for us.

#metrics update: this game was watched by 80,000 people in Australia apparently, which is 20k more than watched the CCM v Perth game.

Not bad, even without Tim Cahill playing, as the article notes.

Crowd figures for opening round:

Friday Brisbane Roar v Melbourne Victory 15,805

Saturday Wellington Phoenix v Melbourne City 10,034

Saturday Western Sydney Wanderers v Sydney FC 61,880 – a new single match crowd record

Saturday Perth Glory v Central Coast Mariners 9,501

Sunday Newcastle Jets v Adelaide United 9,145

The Perth attendance was a surprise to me. First game of the season, celebration of 20 years as a club, excellent recruitment and high expectation of a top 2 finish, yet under 10k. Puts our attendance into perspective and shows what a positive sign it is for the club. By all accounts there are some good marketing strategies being put into place this season to help bolster those effing metrics.

The key now is to keep everyone on the bandwagon even if the season quite doesn't live up to the high expectations many have. After that horrible license renewal crap we had to go through with FFA I'm much more interested in the long term future of the club than a poor run of form or maybe a disappointing finish.

On the "supposed" Manny booing, from my perspective, the booing was about the ridiculous time wasting but as he came on there was some polite clapping.

There were people behind me chanting "Judas" when he came on, in aisle 21. I turned around and told them not to be so disrespectful. They shut up pretty quick when there were murmurs of agreement around me.

So crowd numbers, I believe they were correct and the difference of 1,500-2,000 was because of those Junior Memberships.

I was out on the concourse for the collection from 5.30pm and before the gates had open there was heaps of the juniors there with parents, all their tickets have been allocated on the side of the stadium under the cameras (They also had their own entrance on the left which was open).

 Had friends that used to sit over there that weren't able to get their normal seats because that area was blocked out this year for the junior memberships. Combined with what was inside the lounges 10,000 seems right.

What will be interesting is I think we will see them back next game (maybe not all of them) but it will be them converting into year long memberships. Sure it is $20 for the kids which is amazing, but its a parent membership along with that that will need to be sold.

Manny was great for us and I was never going to boo him or call him Judas, but to chant for him is too far in the other direction. At the end of the day, he plays for the opposing team. 

I also noticed the split strikers.  Not sure Watson's strength is attacking from wide, that was very odd.  Also why sign Lowry and then play Parkhouse ahead of him???

Who got caught out for the goal.  The defender farthest away gets caught ball watching badly

Parkhouse seemed ready from our preseason games. Maybe Lowry was carrying a niggle.

It is a recurring theme for the Phoenix that fringe or young players often make their debut out of position.  Really tough ask I think...

Well we do seem to make it hard for ourselves by playing them out of position! 

I didn't realize the Judas thing was disrespectful, I thought it was YF having banter with players that just left.

Was the barba-judas chants etc. meant as disrespectful to the Nix's ex players?  

Some of you guys are far too sensitive.

So what if there were a few boo's for an opposition player and a few cheeky 'Judas' calls? It's not like someone threw coins at him.

The numbers will be grand for the nix 2 home games. See what i did there. I know of many families that bailed on Saturday due to a perceived drenching that did not materalize. They all have junior nix tickets and are kicking themselves they missed the opener. My kids- though cold - could not wait for the nix game. Being as it is on a Sunday, slightly earlier and with a holiday on the Monday I think the metrics will be good for the nix 2 home games add in better weather - the only equation left is for the team to put out an entertaining performance. I think the lack of goals out weighed the final result.

Maybe they just werent having $9 beers or $5 chips

Heaps of juniors took up the "first 3 games free" thing. But at $2.50 for a child anyway, the biggest hurdle to getting them along is the late games. The game started 5 mins late, there was 8 or 9 mins of added time, it was about 10.30pm by the time we got home!

Tell these guys:

http://www.foxsports.com.au/about-us/faq-contact-u...

Has anyone timed the keeper red card stoppage?

we counted up to 12 on one of them.

we got about 9 minutes before the game restarted after the red. then the keeper came on before the sub was made so kind of made the ref look as though he did not know what he was doing. then all the city players falling over and rolling around in the second half wasted about another 9 minutes. 7 minutes injury time was pretty good i guess they cannot put 18 minutes up on the board.