Good luck to the Melbourne Storm in their quest to drag in a crowd, or to even create any interest in their preliminary final, which thanks to some fortuitous results, will be played at Etihad Stadium on the evening of Saturday week, about two hours after the AFL Grand Final finishes over at the MCG.

Grand Final day in Melbourne is a quasi public holiday and pretty much nothing happens after lunchtime. Shops close, real state agents take the weekend off, golf courses are empty and they don't even hold a race meeting. It is a day for beers and barbecues, so good luck to the Storm in their quest to attract a decent crowd to Etihad that night.

Perhaps in order to encourage a bigger crowd, Etihad's Medallion Club ticket holders should be forced to give up their entitlement to seats at the MCG (and good ones at that) and be required to attend the rugby league instead.

Sure, for a few of the diehards, a home preliminary final, unthinkable given the Storm's up-and-down form in the lead-up to the finals, is a gift from the gods. A Friday night final will have been more preferable for the Storm, but in what was a smart move by the AFL, Etihad has been booked by the VFL for a Victorian football double-header, the TAC Cup Grand Final, followed by the VFL premiership decider.

Storm CEO Brian Waldron says he looks forward to working with the NRL to create a "media program" to help promote the fact that there is another game of footy in town on that particular weekend.

In other words, about two pages of contra per day in the Herald Sun sports pages, and some quirky picture stories about that "other footy team" on page 5.