A-League side Melbourne Victory Chair Anthony Di Pietro has "kept his counsel during the increasingly frenetic debate over the grand final stadium debacle," according to Michael Lynch of THE AGE. But on Thursday afternoon, as he hosted a "Victory in Business lunch" which drew 1,287 guests at Crown, Di Pietro "broke his silence" as Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, FFA CEO David Gallop and corporate heavyweights "looked on." Di Pietro blasted the Australian Football League as "small minded" and "mean spirited" for refusing to shift Sunday's Western Bulldogs vs. Fremantle fixture from Etihad to another venue. Di Pietro also called for government to ensure there was a "much larger
rectangular stadium than AAMI so that future big matches would not take
place with tens of thousands of fans locked out." He pointed out that "all of his boardroom colleagues and
all the club's supporters were general sports fans as well as being
Victory fans," and that the AFL should realize they "also supported footy clubs as well as took active roles with them." Di Pietro: "There's room for
all sporting codes [in Melbourne]. It's incredibly mean spirited and small minded that the A-League grand final could not have
been played at Etihad, its spiritual home" (THE AGE, 5/14).
