Bulldogs supporters Marilyn, Kym, Nicole, Chris, Danielle and Jack arrive at Whitten Oval after travelling to Sydney by bus to watch the preliminary final. Credit:Chris Hopkins Sure, not everyone can get to arguably the most popular sporting occasion on the calendar. But what always galls most, and particularly now given the romance attached to the Bulldogs' fairytale, is who can. While many Doggies fans who've been watching their team 50-odd years and never got to see them at the "big dance" miss out, there's still a spot for those with enough money and the lust to be seen at "an event". On Sunday, AFL event office corporate packages costing anywhere from $1610 to as much as $2590 were still available to anyone, regardless of whether they were an AFL club member. And not long after the Bulldogs had won their stunning preliminary final victory over Greater Western Sydney, Etihad Stadium was contacting its mailing list offering packages costing between $990 and $1400.

Thousands of Bulldogs fans made the trek north to see their team play GWS in a preliminary final. Credit:Chris Hopkins Smells a little off, doesn't it? It's fair to suggest the club of the western suburbs probably has a greater share of members and supporters from lower socio-economic groups. Those sorts of amounts are simply beyond their means, regardless of their passion for their club. And that's simply wrong. Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge and Tom Liberatore celebrate after the club's preliminary final win. Credit:AFL Media/Getty Images It's no easy task for the AFL to satisfy the demands of all its various interest groups, who on grand final day include competing clubs, the other clubs, AFL members, Melbourne Cricket Club members and the corporate sector.

It has also at least attempted in recent years to address the inequities of the grand final ticket carve-up, hiving off some more tickets to members of the clubs actually involved in the grand final. Full of heart: Injured Bulldogs skipper Bob Murphy embraces his stand-in, Easton Wood, after the Bulldogs beat GWS. Credit:Getty Images But last year, the break up was still 30,000 to competing clubs Hawthorn and West Coast, 25,000 to MCC members, 21,000 to AFL members, 7000 to other clubs and 17,000 to the corporates and other stakeholders. The legitimacy of that 17,000 is highly questionable. Corporate backers already get a pretty good bang for their buck. Is this not one occasion where the AFL could insist that there's a fundamental principle involved of allowing paid-up, passionate members of the grand final clubs to have a decent chance of getting there to see their team? The AFL Fans' Association continues, rightly, to bang on about this issue, and has now launched an online petition calling for competing club members to be allocated at least 50,000 tickets on grand final day.

It also makes this very valid comparison. In England, another code of football's showpiece event, the FA Cup final, played at the 90,000-capacity Wembley, allocates just on 57,500 tickets to the competing clubs. Loading That's 64 per cent of the total allocation, and more than double the AFL's 30 per cent. And for our game's administrators, that should be an embarrassing contrast. Romance is an essential part of our indigenous game, and there have been few football stories in memory as romantic as the Western Bulldogs making it to the grand final. No group of fans are more deserving of being there to witness it. And if Australian football truly is the game of the people, it needs to do a lot more to make sure that starts happening