AFL’s hardline stadium stance pays off as crucial votes clear path for Devils
We will never know whether the AFL had a card to play if the Tassie stadium was voted down, but like all good poker players, their bluff was enough after 1000 days of fierce debate.
It took nearly 1000 days, involved Australia’s favourite politician and never-ending doubts but in the end the AFL’s hard line stadium stance only had to convince four people.
Some Tasmanians will forever wonder what the money eventually poured into the stadium at Hobart’s Macquarie Point could have been better spent on and some will never forgive the AFL for its unwillingness to budge on plans for a roofed stadium.
But the mainland monolith never needed the dissenters on board, only the independent quartet that jumped on the Devils bandwagon on Wednesday and finally – it seems – secured the state an AFL team, pending the final, official upper house vote.
Publicly, the AFL always held the line.
Persistent media requests and meetings aimed to budge the AFL on its concrete ‘no stadium, no team’ stance but never broke through.
Whether it was a bluff or not, we will never know, as it was enough to get independent upper house Tasmanian politicians Bec Thomas, Tania Rattray, Casey Hiscutt and Dean Harriss on board.
Thomas and Rattray pulled on their figurative Tassie jumper on Wednesday morning and Hiscutt followed in the afternoon, securing enough votes in the upper house to get the stadium built.
A fourth independent – Harriss – made his intentions clear on Wednesday evening.
Thomas outlined several misgivings and six parts of a deal agreed with the government to win her approval.
Hiscutt didn’t sound completely enthused about the stadium as he announced his support but he needed a “high threshold of evidence against the team in the stadium” to vote ‘no’.
Similarly, Harriss didn’t love the stadium deal but it was “the one we have”.
“I accept that a vote against the order is likely to result in a withdrawal of the Devils licence and the end of the AFL dream,” he said.
Basically, the lure of the team was enough to get past stadium misgivings.
This is the tightrope the AFL has walked since the 18 club presidents approved the Devils on 2 May, 2023 – 946 days go – when a licence was provisionally granted.
The roofed stadium was the standout of those provisions, but the league never moved off the line publicly.
There was backroom work all the time.
Likely Australia’s most approved politician, South Australian premier Peter Malinauskas, pitched the benefits of Adelaide Oval in a 45 minute meeting in May.
That pitch included Thomas, one of those key three that got it over the line.
In late October a contingent including Greens MPs Vica Bayley and Cassy O’Connor and independent MPs Peter George and Kristie Johnston sat down with AFL COO Tom Harley at AFL HQ.
They left without a change to that rock solid stance.
“It was made quite clear from the get-go by Tom Harley … that the AFL’s position was no stadium, no team,” George said.
If those four weren’t convinced, it didn’t matter – the AFL didn’t need them.
It got what it needed from the upper house politicians required to pass the stadium through, with the Labor and Liberal parties already on board.
The hurdles won’t stop for the Devils – another provision of the licence is that the stadium is half-built by October 2027 and completed for the 2029 season.
They better get digging.
But like the need for the stadium, the AFL and the Devils were probably too far all-in to get out.
We will never know whether the league had the cards to get it done if the stadium was voted down, but like all good poker players, the bluff was enough.
Originally published as AFL’s hardline stadium stance pays off as crucial votes clear path for Devils
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