Ignoring criticism and repeating yourself over and over doesn't make you right.
Their crowds have artificially stagnated because they lost the ability to draw crowds of 50K+ and 60K+ that they were drawing against bigger teams in the 00s. Those handful of higher drawing games boosted their averages during the 00s, and early 10s to a lesser extent, giving the false impression that their attendance numbers have flattened out significantly more than they actually have. In the same vein, if they had access to a larger capacity stadium (that isn't complete garbage) they'd start drawing those larger crowds again and it'd have the same effect of weighting their numbers to a degree.
Their ratings aren't a great representation of their popularity for many reasons. Put simply, the AFL has different cultural quirks to the NRL, one being that there're less poser couch potatoes. Another reason is that their growth hasn't been restricted to Sydney. They've effectively acted as the de facto NSW AFL team, which isn't reflected in their ratings as regional data is beyond useless frankly.
There're other metrics to measure growth by than just those two as well, all of which you conveniently choose to ignore... The truth is that the AFL's metrics have slowly, but steadily, been growing across NSW, and only fools would pretend otherwise.
Finally, as I said before, appealing to the opinion of a former Swans Chairman, whom you're undoubtably badly misrepresenting, is nothing more than an appeal to authority. The fact that he held a position of power at the Swans doesn't make him right.
www.sbs.com.au
