There is an urgent need for the AFL and the Tasmanian Government to work together and upgrade York Park in Launceston to hold at least 30,000 spectators, regardless of whether it continues to be Hawthorn’s part-time home or Tassie gets its own team.
Attendances at the Hawks’ games in the past two seasons, largely confined to fixtures against South Australian and West Australian teams that would have struggled to attract decent numbers in Melbourne, show that the market is there for bigger crowds at more attractive games.
The Hawks, surprisingly, have captured a consistently loyal Tasmanian following since St Kilda, which seemed the most logical team to do so, pulled the plug in 2006 after four years playing home games there.
The Saints developed a huge fan base in Tassie in the 1960s, when wily club secretary Ian Drake, himself a Tasmanian, attracted a “foreign legion” of Apple Islanders that was largely responsible for winning their only premiership in 1966.
Darrel Baldock, Ian Stewart, Verdun Howell, John Bingley and Bob Murray, who was born in Tasmania but never played there, were stars in that team, with Tasmanian fans hanging on their every move.
Howell was so popular in his native Launceston that he wrote a weekly column for The Examiner, which was quite an innovation for a regional newspaper in those days.
He was also one of the chief drawcards in the Victorian team (this was long before State of Origin) that played Tasmania at York Park in 1960 and went down in history by losing.
Back in those days, when black-and-white TV as just starting up in Tasmania, and for many years after the advent of colour, there was an outcry if the St Kilda game didn’t make it, at least in highlights form, on to Tasmanian screens.
But 40 years later, perhaps because many of those fans had gone to the great oval in the sky, St Kilda didn’t find playing home games in Tasmania to their liking as much as they had hoped, and pulled the plug after eight matches between 2003 and 2006.
The Saints averaged more than 17,000 fans at York Park only in the last of those years, when they attracted an average 17,108.
The figures for the other years were 16,704 in 2003, 16,615 in 2004, and 15,772 in 2005.
The Hawks’ averages in the two years since arriving at their sponsorship deal with the Tasmanian Government, under which they play four home games a year, have been 17,403 in 2007 and 17,528 this year.
Before then, Hawthorn had made 12 home-game appearances at York Park, making a total of 20 games between 2001 and 2008, with their best result 20,971 against Richmond in 2006, the record AFL turn-out at the venue and just about as many as can be crammed in.
The only other visiting Victorian teams have been the Western Bulldogs and North Melbourne (two games each) and Geelong (one).
The Hawks’ second-best crowd was the 19,929 at the Brisbane Lions’ only Tasmanian appearance (this year), and apart from those games the visitors have always been from South Australia and Western Australia.
St Kilda’s biggest crowd was 19,223 against Port Adelaide in 2004.
Both teams’ worst crowds were against Fremantle – Hawthorn’s 13,862 in 2006 and St Kilda’s 12,465 in 2005, the lowest crowd for any official AFL home-and-away fixture at York Park.
Fremantle was also involved in the two next-worst attendances, 14,554 in 2004, and 15,066 in 2002, both against Hawthorn, and the average crowd for the Dockers’ six appearances has been only 14,740, the worst of any visiting club against either the Saints or the Hawks.
The game the Tasmanian fans would really like to see, of course, because there is still a considerable amount of sentiment behind the Saints, is Hawthorn v St Kilda.
But that would probably attract at least 30,000 fans, well beyond York Park’s capacity, so it won’t happen in the foreseeable future, because it would be madness to spurn the larger crowds the two teams attract in Melbourne.
Hawthorn’s Tasmanian games, though, even against lesser teams, will become even more popular now that the Hawks have won the flag.
Which is why money needs to be spent on upgrading the Launceston ground’s facilities, with a new covered grandstand on the eastern wing the first priority.
One of the obstacles to be overcome will be, as always, the internecine squabbling that has gone on since time immemorial in Tasmanian football politics.
Too many of the game’s administrators believe that if it’s not in Hobart it doesn’t deserve to exist, and the Government and the AFL need to hit this on the head.
Hard.
York Park is not only the best football ground in Tasmania, it is also one of the best in the AFL, and much better located than Hobart for spectators from the state’s north-west coast, so forget all about Bellerive.
Now is the time to do the work on the upgrade, because a 30,000 to 40,000 capacity stadium will be a far more attractive proposition for the AFL when it finally realises the futility of its western Sydney pipedream and sends its 18th team where it rightfully belongs.
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