Who is the biggest AFL club in the land? It’s always cause for hot debate.

When former Sydney CEO Andrew Ireland joined SEN SA Breakfast last week, he boldly declared that the Swans were the most popular AFL club in Australia.

He claimed the Swans had 1.3 million fans - 500,000 more than the second biggest AFL club, Collingwood.

An article in The Age newspaper last week stated that Richmond had already surpassed 75,000 members this year and are well on their way to smashing through the historic 100,000 membership milestone.

Other Melbourne clubs, Hawthorn (60,007), Essendon (51,011), Geelong (41,034) and Carlton (38,965) enter the new year with healthy figures, while Melbourne (30,096), North Melbourne (26,921), the Western Bulldogs (26,855) and St Kilda (25,500) remain in the middle band of the league membership tally.

Reigning premiers and West Australian power house, the Eagles, are already at 60,000 members, while 45,000 Docker members have already signed up to the struggling Perth rival.

Let’s now look to our South Australian clubs where the figures get really interesting.

According to The Age article, Port Adelaide sit just under 43,000 members. That’s of January 7th, 2019.

The Crows, in figures released to The Age, have 77,500 giving them the biggest membership base in the competition to this point in January.

The biggest club. Surprising isn’t it?

Well that’s because they have fudged the numbers.

In a clear ploy to attract the sponsorship and corporate dollar as well as a strategic move to diminish Port Adelaide’s presence in the South Australian market, they have inexcusably included NON Financial “digital only” We Fly As One members.

These people don’t have to attend any games, or invest any money into the club to be included in these figures. The only benefit to them is a whopping 10% discount at the Crows merchandise store and they are included on the club’s bulk email list.

Some of you would say it’s just a number, who cares? What’s the big deal?

But supporters, sponsors and the football public actually believe this fairy-tale that the Crows are the biggest club in Australia and…. worse still…. almost DOUBLE the size of rival Port Adelaide in terms of fan base.

Let’s not forget that in April 2018, Adelaide revealed that its membership based had soared to just under 83,000. It was only later in the year, and after the AFL had actually cleaned up the data, that we realised Adelaide’s legitimate figure was in fact 64,000.

Of course the Official membership numbers will be released by the AFL later this year, and those numbers are impossible to fudge, but by that point the ship would have sailed.

Adelaide please, stop misleading us all.