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AFL chief Andrew Demetriou has stated that if a 19th team was introduced into the AFL, it would very likely be based in Tasmania.
There is no doubt that Australia’s most southerly state deserves its own football side, certainly more than the Gold Coast or Western Sydney. Tasmania has a rich football history littered with legends like Royce Hart, Peter Hudson and Ian Stewart.
Hawthorn currently plays four games each season in Launceston and North Melbourne has two games in Hobart this year and next. But that is not good enough. Tasmania is brimming with passionate football followers who would cherish the opportunity to have their own side.
However, surely 18 teams is sufficient for the AFL? Why introduce a 19th team, further diluting the quality of the competition when there are already too many clubs in Victoria? One of those Victorian teams has to relocate.
It is hard to justify having 10 clubs in one state, particularly when four of them – Melbourne, St Kilda, Western Bulldogs and Richmond – have been starved of success for so long.
St Kilda has secured just one premiership in more than a century of competing in the VFL/AFL and that solitary success was 47 years ago.
Melbourne has not won a flag in almost 50 years, having last tasted premiership glory in 1964. Richmond’s most recent triumph was in 1980 and they have underachieved so consistently that they last made the finals 12 years ago.
Western Bulldogs fans, meanwhile, have been waiting since 1954 for the club to win another flag. So which Victorian team should be relocated to Tasmania?
Collingwood, Essendon, Carlton, Richmond, Hawthorn and Geelong are powerhouse clubs with huge fan bases… they are not moving anywhere.
That leaves North Melbourne, St Kilda, Western Bulldogs and Melbourne. AFL figures released prior to Round 1 of this season showed those four clubs have by far the lowest memberships of the Victorian sides.
St Kilda (30,300 members), North Melbourne (29,000), Melbourne (29,000) and Western Bulldogs (24,112) were all well behind the next least supported Victorian side Geelong (35,182) and light years away from equaling the likes of Collingwood (70,000), Richmond (51,171) or Essendon (47,000).
North Melbourne chairman James Brayshaw has vowed the Kangaroos will not relocate while he is in that position. That is a fair call because his club is in solid shape. The Kangaroos have been a consistently good team the past two decades and are now also prospering off the field. Their membership increased an astounding 50 percent between 2007 and 2012.
The Western Bulldogs have the smallest supporter base of any Victorian club, but they play a crucial role for the AFL as the sole team in Melbourne’s working class western suburbs. It is very doubtful that the AFL would want to shift the club to Tasmania, leaving a gaping hole in the city’s west which could be exploited by its main competitor, soccer.
St Kilda, despite its 47-year premiership drought, has been reasonably successful on the field, making the finals 11 times since 1991 and qualifying for three grand finals during that period (four if you count the 2010 replay). Over the past decade they have also managed to double their membership figures.
There is no doubt Melbourne is currently the most vulnerable of the Victorian clubs. Admittedly, its bottom line and membership numbers have become far healthier in recent years thanks to the influence of the late Jim Stynes, who as club president led a successful campaign to rejuvenate the club’s finances.
But as far as football goes, Melbourne have been a joke, plummeting to new depths of mediocrity the past six years.
Since 2007, Melbourne’s best season was its finish of 12th in 2010. During that period the Demons have won just 33 of the 137 games it’s played. That is a woeful effort. Despite receiving a glut of top 10 draft picks during this trough, the club has shown zero improvement.
Meanwhile, better managed clubs like Geelong have managed to stay near the top of the ladder despite losing a raft of gun veterans and not having the luxury of draft concessions. The Cats have succeeded through canny recruiting and by instilling in their players and staff a ruthless commitment to victory. Melbourne, contrastingly, has developed an unfortunate culture of defeat and mismanagement.
The advantage of relocating to Tasmania a crisis-stricken club like Melbourne is that it would provide a fresh start. A new board, a new coaching panel, and a reinvigorated playing group could forge their own legacy, freed from the baggage that would otherwise weigh them down at the MCG.
It would be sad to see the end of any of the Victorian clubs. But by relocating to Tasmania they could morph into something greater while in the process thrilling a state of ravenous football followers.
The AFL would almost certainly provide the new club with extra draft picks and a larger salary cap, just as it did for Gold Coast and GWS. While such offerings would not likely be as generous as those handed to the Suns or GWS, they would give the Tasmanian side a running start, given it would have a full player list from the relocated Victorian club to build upon.
Despite being gutted by the demise of their club, supporters of the relocated team would have a new side to barrack for and, no doubt, a fair proportion of them would get behind the Tasmanian outfit.
This big group of fans, when combined with thousands of local Tasmanian supporters, would give the fledgling club a strong start-up fan base.
Exactly which Victorian club should relocate is difficult to say. It would require a team of individuals more qualified than myself to pore over club finances and analyse a plethora of internal and external issues at each club before a wise choice could be made. Negotiations with the Tasmanian Government would further complicate the matter.
But for the good of the AFL and for the people of Tasmania, a Victorian team should relocate. And they should relocate soon.