POLITICS has been the big talking point up in Queensland this week. For those who don't know, Anna Bligh became the first female elected to the office of Premier of an Australian state when her Labor Party resisted a swing towards the conservatives to comfortably maintain power.

The election was of interest to Gold Coast Utd fans particularly for two reasons. First, the Liberal-National Party is strongly backed by club owner Clive Palmer. It has been suggested that their loss is GCU's gain, as Palmer will now retreat to his ‘other' new love trying to get the taste of success that politics couldn't provide.

The second point of interest was that Labor have committed to spending $60 million on Gold Coast Stadium for the benefit of the AFL club set to take residence there. Interesting that this is 33% more money than Kevin Rudd committed to a preliminary World Cup bid for the FFA, a decision derided by various AFL-centric media sources.

I still wonder what hope of success the Gold Coast AFL club has. The Brisbane Bears struggled to gain even the paltriest levels of support before relocating from the Coast to Brisbane, and even now attendance and membership figures are amongst the lowest in the league. These numbers continue to fall as the ‘glory-days' of the hat-trick of premierships become a distant memory.

The two pre-season matches played by the Lions at Gold Coast Stadium also struggled for attendances given the supposed buzz the code is generating since GC17 was announced. Figures of 6,103 and 4,369 will hardly have United or Titans owners quaking in their boots. In comparison, a game in Canberra was watched by 5,397 people. Hawthorn and Melbourne drew 8,122 people in Launceston. Even a game in Bendigo managed 2,500 people. Many games in the pre-season competition were watched by over 20,000 people putting the Gold Coast's showing to shame.

As NRL media figure Roy Masters pointed out recently, the claims of a massive AFL community based on vast hordes of relocated Victorians at the Gold Coast is a myth.  Government data shows four NSW-origin Gold Coasters for every relocated Victorian.  I doubt many of these were Sydney Swans members, either.

So with the Gold Coast AFL club seemingly doomed, Palmer can turn his attention to the two other professional franchises in the region - the Titans (NRL) and the Blaze (NBL). The Blaze's 2-3,000 fans are on a par with the rest of the league, but unlikely to detract from football attendances. The Titans are of course the big player, but it was interesting to note the attendance for their round 1 clash was only 16,203 - down on last year's average (21,618) and corresponding fixture (26,453).

Could GCU be landing their first crowd-figure blows as early as six months before they play their first A-League match?