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Opinion
Tasmania come on down!
No serious AFL fan can deny that Tasmania deserves a football team. It’s a traditional Aussie Rules state that has been long rejected and disrespected. Whatever side of the fence you sit on the stadium debate, a new team in Tassie is a good thing.
But the announcement that Tasmania is coming brings an awkward scenario for the AFL – an odd number of teams.
Traditionally this is something the AFL has disliked. It happened for one season when Gold Coast came into the competition in 2011 before GWS entered the following season. Before this, you have to go back to 1991-94 when we had 15 teams before Fremantle entered in 1995, and then Port Adelaide joined in 1996, with Fitzroy merging with Brisbane at the same time.
The AFL does not love the weekly bye concept, and for good reason too – having a bye in Round 1 is far less advantageous for a team than having a bye in Round 11. It makes an already unbalanced fixture even more confusing and controversial and this is something the AFL will desperately try and avoid.
So, is a 20th team inevitable? Or is there anything else the AFL can do to balance up the awkwardness 19 teams create?
Firstly let’s park any suggestion of two Victorian teams merging. It will never happen. North Melbourne and St Kilda are the two teams that always get thrown into this conversation but I’d imagine fans of these clubs would storm Marvel Stadium with pitchforks if this ever became a reality.
We can also park any possibility of AFL admitting defeat on the Gold Coast or GWS. These clubs are frontier clubs and here to stay, as poor as their followings remain. The AFL deleting one of those sides would be akin to admitting defeat.
So, we come to the inevitable scenario that is an AFL 20th team. I really don’t think there are many footy fans that actually want it, I certainly don’t but it’s just a matter of time before it happens. Heck Gillon Mclachlan even admitted as much.
So let’s explore how this team might look, and more importantly where it might be.
This seems to be the early favourite. Perth is a fast-growing population with over two million and counting, and two financially stable and wealthy clubs, even if the current on-field form isn’t great. The discussion is centred mainly around the Northern Suburbs, Joondalup to be specific, and financially, it probably makes the most sense. The stadium and a quality training centre at Arena Joondalup are already there, and there is a population base. Heck, WAFL club West Perth have made Joondalup their own and the argument may well be that it is indeed West Perth that is elevated to the AFL based in the northern corridor.
On top of this, West Coast have the biggest membership base in the league with a large waiting list. There is reason to suggest some of these fans may take up a new team membership simply to come to the footy.
But, honestly, as a native Western Australian, I ask what is the point. We have two well-supported teams, very few rusted-on Dockers or Eagles fans will change teams at a whim, it’ll dilute a rivalry in a two-team town and anyone that knows Perth will tell you that Joondalup and surrounding areas is full of British and South African ex-pats, many who are more likely to have Liverpool or Springbok flags in their front yards than Eagles or Dockers flags, let alone a new team.
It may make sense financially but I feel it would be being brought in purely for the sake of it, and wouldn’t gain much support.
Reuben Ginbey of the Eagles. (Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images)
If not a Perth metro team, does it make more sense to base a team in Western Australia’s southwest perhaps? It’s a strong football region and would have an identity separate from that of the two Perth teams.
The issue is the population of Mandurah, Bunbury, Busselton and Dunsborough combined are still less than that of Hobart, so if a Tassie team is deemed to be financially tough a southwest team is impossible. It would still really need strong Perth support, and would probably still have to play home games out of Optus Stadium, unless of course, the State Government decided to build a boutique stadium on Busselton foreshore. This one won’t happen.
I saw Jon Ralph suggest Geraldton in the north recently, this has even less going for it than a team in the southwest, other than Jamie Cripps, Josh Kennedy and Paul Haselby all hailing from nearby Northampton.
The population of the ACT is about 430,000, only about 100,000 less than Tasmania. Include the outlying NSW region of Queanbeyan and it’s even a bit more than this.
If Tassie can have a team, it’s reasonable to suggest Canberra can too. It already has a ground in Manuka, although the AFL may insist this should be upgraded. Canberra draws decent crowds to GWS games, usually better crowds than they get in Western Sydney, but this is the Giants’ problem with Canberra. GWS needs Canberra, its most reliable supporter base is in Canberra, some might argue the Giants should simply move to Canberra. And hence I think the AFL will be very hesitant to bring a Canberra team into the competition.
Some however could argue a Canberra team would be a good thing for GWS as it would force them to make inroads into Sydney and not rely on Canberra as a backup ‘satellite’ supporter base. I think it’s a legitimate option, but there are some problems mainly revolving around GWS that the AFL would need to work through.
(Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
This is the most heartwarming option for me. It would be brilliant to see a Northern Territory team in the competition and get some of the amazing untapped talents that this footy-mad territory has to offer. You think of players from the Territory such as Cyril Rioli, and then you think of just how many amazing players that haven’t been uncovered might yet be given a pathway to the AFL if a team was located there, and it’s extremely exciting.
It also will be after Tasmania, the one gaping hole on the map without an AFL team, for the AFL to be a truly national competition it simply needs the Northern Territory.
However, the entire population of the NT is about 250,000 people. Darwin has just 132,000. Even compared to Tasmania it’s simply tiny.
Then there is the weather, the start of the AFL season would still be in the wet season in Darwin, ruling that out unless they build a stadium with a roof (sound familiar?) It’s also super hot, even in ‘winter’ with the temperature in Darwin barely dropping below 30 degrees in the day, you’d only be able to have night games.
If the AFL pumped lots of money into it, it could work, but realistically with the league already propping up poor Victorian teams and soon-to-be three expansion clubs, is the appetite really then for an even less financially viable fourth?
This fails for the same reasons as the Northern Territory would – population, size and weather.
The small populations of Cairns (150,000) and Townsville (178,00) even combined still probably can’t host an AFL team, when they already have a very well-followed NRL team in the NQ Cowboys dominating the market up there. I think the current scenario of both cities hosting a couple of games a season is probably the way to go here.
The romanticism of suburban grounds such as ‘The Parade’ was hammered home over Gather Round, but realistically a third team in Adelaide has a lot less going for it than a third team in Perth.
It has all the same issues as Perth has in being a two-team town, with Adelaide and Port dominating the market, plus with only two-thirds of the population that Perth has. Adelaide is a very wealthy club, and Port are strong now too, but it isn’t too long ago that they were in difficulty. I think this would be an own-goal for the AFL and would also dilute the competition’s most fierce rivalry.
(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Ok, this is very outlandish I agree, but I thought I’d put it in primarily because I currently live in New Zealand and it would be so awesome to see a team over here.
Auckland (probably where the team would be based) does have a population of 1.7 million, and if the team was to encompass the whole of the country and play the odd home game in Wellington, Christchurch or Queenstown (for the Aussie ex-pats in ski season?) it would have about five million potential fans.
The big problem is 99% of these people already have a team: The All Blacks. This team so dominates the country that realistically AFL just doesn’t rate a mention. The stadiums, apart from the Cake Tin in Wellington are mostly rectangular, and if cricket looks weird at Eden Park, imagine footy there!
I think if rugby didn’t have such a stronghold in the country it would be ideal, but it’s not going to happen. Our sport is uniquely Australian and I just don’t see international expansion taking hold anytime soon.
So with all the above options presented, I still don’t really see one that is necessary or viable. But yet we all know it will happen, the AFL is determined to continue to expand.
The one positive I can see with 20 teams as we get closer to fixture equality is 19 rounds where every team plays everyone once (and switches between home and away each season) – with potentially Gather Round and Rivalry Round added on top of this (so we get to see Derbies, Showdowns and big Melbourne Rivalries twice) you get 21 games, which is a lot closer to being about right.
What do you think? Where is the AFL’s inevitable 20th team going to be located?
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