Perhaps so.

On one hand, the AFL would have been delighted with the 42,866 who turned up to watch Carlton's stunning offensive blitz on St Kilda. On the flipside, television ratings were poor.

Channel Seven's telecast was third in its timeslot in Melbourne, attracting only 371,000 viewers - well down on the 673,000 who tuned in last year to watch the Magpies take on the Saints.

This year's figures meant the footy barely slipped into Melbourne's top-ten shows. It was sliced and diced by Ten's MasterChef Australia (541,000), Nine's Two and a Half Men (424,000), The Mentalist (385,000) and The Big Bang Theory (384,000).

If that's any guide, then the AFL may well be on the money with its concerns about "football fatigue" when matches are spread across four days.

"The view at the moment is that if we do that every week, the weekend would be too long, the football weekend," AFL chief operating officer Gillon McLachlan told Melbourne radio station SEN.

"We think it's great to have it as an event in the first two or three Mondays a year, and two or three Thursdays, and try and work around school holidays and things like Mother's Day."

As St Kilda great Danny Frawley acknowledged, the AFL has "cherry-picked" its two recent Monday-night matches, with the Saints, Magpies and Blues, obviously, three of the competition's biggest clubs and almost certain of drawing a large crowd.

If the crowd figure alone is taken into account, the AFL still has good reason to ramp up the number of games from 2012 when the Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney are in the competition and a new timeslot is needed to fit in an extra match per round.

The AFL is leaning more towards the 5pm slot on Saturday for its ninth match but it does believe Monday night has great potential, and shares characteristics with its prime-time Friday-night games. Both slots, for instance, are stand-alone and allow the host broadcaster's advertisers and the clubs' sponsors maximum exposure.

Brisbane coach Michael Voss and Saints counterpart Ross Lyon have backed the slot, while Channel Nine has already indicated it is keen to develop the night if it re-gains a slice of the broadcasting rights from 2012.

What was surprising for Seven, and perhaps sobering for Nine, was that audience figures were poor even though the match was broadcast only on a 30-minute delay in Melbourne, beginning at 7.30pm. To the frustration of many, Friday-night matches start more than an hour later yet are a ratings success.

Etihad Stadium officials and home team St Kilda both reported strong corporate sales on Monday night, indicating business folk were still keen to leave work and head straight to the footy, even though it was a working night.

And judging by the number of children cheering on the rampant Blues, there may be a few imaginative excuses for not completing homework at some schools today.

The players, however, aren't so keen. A major survey last year found not one supported the night.

One cause for concern is that the Blues and Saints now have just five days to recover before resuming battle, this time against Port Adelaide and Essendon, respectively.

"As a player, I don't think the players are all that keen on it. It makes the weekend very long," dual Geelong premiership skipper Tom Harley says.

"But I think it's definitely get merits from a broadcasting point of view and viewership.

"I guess they are the parameters the AFL is interested in. It's not so much what day the players prefer to play on. But we are in a professional age now so players really play when they are told to play."

That's the case in the National Rugby League, which has successfully developed Monday-night games on Fox Sports, while, as regularly mentioned, Monday-night NFL games are an institution in the US.

However, it should be remembered there that NFL matches are generally played only on Sundays and Mondays, and Monday matches are rotated around the country.

Only 15 matches have been played on Monday nights in AFL history. The first was held at, of all places, the Brisbane Exhibition Ground in 1952 when champion full-forward John Coleman booted 13 goals to lead Essendon to a thumping win over Geelong.

The average attendance for all matches has been a healthy 38,000. If the AFL handles the spot judiciously - for instance, schedules heavyweight teams and limits the number of games to about six per season - there's still no reason why it's not worth persisting with.