Last Friday almost 30,000 Melburnian football supporters sold-out the rectangular Aami Park, generating an atmosphere befitting any football match anywhere in the world. In response, the football was committed, fast and unrelenting. The package was a league football experience of the highest order.

This Saturday just 17,000 predominately Melburnian football supporters spread themselves out in the vast spaces of Etihad Stadium to watch a repeat of last year's Grand Final as Melbourne Victory defeated Sydney FC in what should be the biggest game of the regular season. 17,000 is still a healthy attendance and a figure to be envied by the rest of the competition. However, now that Melbourne is home to a much-loved and amply-proportioned soccer stadium Victory's decision to relocate what their marketing department has termed ‘blockbuster' games to the Docklands oval looks to have backfired.

At a time when the A-League has to fight for every fan the scheduling of a marquee game at a third-full oval will not do it any favours. It's unlikely the match would have attracted many more fans had it been played on Swan Street but those 17,000 would have enjoyed a much better atmosphere and contributed much more to the spectacle for those watching on TV and thinking of attending future games.

Victory's average attendance last season of 21,000 fits comfortably into the new stadium while that season's high of 30,700 requires only a few hundred to miss out. The logic for continuing to use a 55,000 capacity oval no longer exists.

AAMI Park is an outstanding venue in which to watch and play football. As BPL's Clint Bolton reminded us recently, the stadium amplifies the noise generated by supporters and transfers it onto the pitch. Just a few thousand fans can feel like tens of thousands and tens of thousands feels like a Grand Final.

Etihad Stadium is a great venue to watch the AFL. For crowds of less than 50,000 it offers an inner-city solution to matches that would be dwarfed by the cavernous MCG. Crucially though, it is an oval; which means when it is reconfigured for soccer it requires artificial boundaries and maroons spectators some distance from the pitch.

If there are horses for courses, this is surely an example of the reverse.

Victory needed the Docklands stadium to help them grow but prolonging the relationship does them no favours now they have a permanent footballing home. The stadium diminishes the matchday experience for Victory's passionate fans with the club risking alienating sections of support or losing fans altogether to their new neighbour. Some Victory supporters felt so upset about having to return to Etihad they threatened to boycott the game. How many fans followed through with this protest is hard to say but surely it's not in the club's interests to antagonise its own supporters?

While this policy operates, every game Victory plays away from AAMI Park strengthens Melbourne Heart's claims to be the primary footballing tenants at the ground. With fierce competition for the hearts and minds of Melbourne's footballing public this could work strongly in Heart's favour.

The first Melbourne derby showed the A-League at its very best. Victory versus Sydney was an opportunity to at least match if not raise this experience. By playing the game in a stadium built for the AFL they never stood a chance.