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The question of an AFL team in Tasmania has been regularly asked over recent years, but HQ has never looked likely to seriously entertain the possibility.
Why? The simple reason is that Tasmania is full of AFL fans who already buy merchandise, purchase memberships and watch the game (and most importantly, the ad breaks) on telly.
Putting a team there wouldn’t be courting a new market in the way that establishing teams on the Gold Coast and in Western Sydney has been.
It’d be a fitting recognition of the passion of Tasmanian fans – but without a financial incentive, the AFL isn’t keen.
Australian rules’ presence in Tasmania has many more problems though than just the lack of a team in the state. In February the Burnie Dockers, a Tasmanian State League team with history dating back to the 19th century, was forced to pull out of the league.
The TSL, Tasmania’s highest level of competition for Aussie Rules football, had ten teams across the state during the 2013 season. Flash forward five years later and it has dwindled to just seven.
Young talent coming into the AFL system from the state looks to be at risk of drying up too. There’s been just one Tasmanian drafted to the league in the last two years.
Gillon McLachlan said at the AFL’s season launch three weeks ago that the league won’t abandon Tasmania, but since then we haven’t heard news of any real action being taken to support Australian rules football in the state.
Meanwhile, the AFL lobbed $38.5 million at Gold Coast and GWS last year alone and reported a net surplus of $60 million dollars in 2017. Gold Coast’s schmicko training facilities, opened last year, set them back $22 million.
How long can Tasmanian fans be expected to keep supporting the game if the AFL turns a blind eye to them yet continues to lob fistfuls of cash at the mostly uninterested population north of the Barassi line?
I lived in the state for four years during my uni days and for all the cracks that can be leveled at the place (and there are plenty), there can be no doubting just how much Tasmanians love their sport.
One only needs to look at the strong support that is enjoyed by the Hobart Hurricanes, the only representation Tasmanians enjoy in any of Australia’s major sporting leagues.
(Photo by Scott Barbour – CA/Cricket Australia/Getty Images)
Tasmanians turn out in good numbers for the AFL games that are brought to the state by Hawthorn and North Melbourne also, but support would be even stronger for a side that is genuinely their team.
You could put a Quidditch team there and people would get around it. Tasmania has so much love to give.
I noted with interest last week that the A-League is now taking expressions of interest for expansion, and because of all I’ve talked about above, Tasmania is an option they would be foolish not to consider.
It’s an opportunity to do something dauntless and daring, to take an audacious crack at pinching away the hearts and minds of a traditional Australian rules state right out from under the nose of the AFL.
Call them the Tasmanian Tigers or Devils and split their games between Hobart and Launceston. Invest heavily in supporting the game at a grassroots level, particularly for the kids. Tell Tasmania that the AFL might not care enough to give them a team – but you do.
People will get involved, I guarantee it.
Out of respect to those who are more diehard followers of the A-League than I, I won’t read you out my laundry list of things the league needs to fix (okay just one quickly – the season goes for far too long). You probably know better than me the issues at hand.
But speaking as an outsider, I must tell you that pumping new teams into obscure parts of regional NSW could not possibly do less to pique the interest on a national level of potential new fans like me.
As sports fans surely we can agree that whatever game we love, they are all built on passion. And there are so many passionate people in Tasmania just waiting for a team to call their own.
At least have a think about it.