With the release of the A League draw, many have voiced their concern at the lack of Evening matches at Jets home games for next season.
With 2 out of 14 matches (or 14%) in the Evening timeslot this is easily the lowest since the A League's inception for this club.
Considering that since the Breakers days and then even the Newcastle United days of the old NSL, traditionally Friday evening has been the favourite kick off time for the majority of Novocastrian football fans.
I have some old HAL match programs and from them I have been able to get some figures that indicate that even in the early days of the Jets, Evening kick-offs rather than Afternoon ones were the norm.
In 2005/06 we had 6 out of 11 Evening matches or 55%
In 2007/08 we had 8 out of 11 Evening matches or 73%

Fast forward a few years to 2013/14 and by now the Evening matches had dwindled to only 5 out of 14 matches or 36%
Interesting is that in that 2013/14 season the 5 Evening home matches averaged 13,960
while the 9 Afternoon matches averaged 10,832
A difference of over 3,000!!!

The word is that we have been allocated the Afternoon matches because our home games do not rate well on Fox.
Okay I understand from a "ratings" viewpoint this but how do the Jets improve the onfield product and attract more people to home games when they have essentially been shafted before a ball has been kicked.

I don't usually use the Knights in my discussions but I think it needs to be noted that a few years back the majority of home games were at night. Crowds were down that year as most Knights supporters prefer the Sunday afternoon timeslot. Pretty sure the NRL took on board the supporters grievances and gave them quite a few more afternoon matches the next season.

Are the FFA (and Fox) also prepared to listen to it's own fans and at least have some sort of compromise for next season or is it just all about accomodating the big city teams who rate better on TV because they have huge populations to draw from!!!