Lightning strike: Northern Territory’s bid to become 20th team after Tasmania
The Devils are waiting for this weekend’s election, but at the other end of the country, the bid for the 20th AFL licence is heating up. Josh Barnes goes inside the Territory Lightning bid – and where else could challenge for it.
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As the Devils sit waiting on the results of Saturday’s Tasmanian state election, at the opposite end of the nation the Northern Territory continues to build its case and Western Australia grows as a wildcard in the expansion race.
A fixture plan, club colours and even a team name are part of developing discussions for a northern AFL club, which could be branded the ‘Territory Lightning’.
And WA football commission CEO Michael Roberts has left the door open for the cashed up west to enter a third AFL team as he said “it’s positive that a third WA team is being spoken about ahead of potential options interstate”.
The ‘Lightning’ has an aim to enter the AFL in 2032, but AFLNT chair and co-chair of the team task-force Sean Bowden said: “if we can do it earlier, we will”.
The club would play in a jumper featuring traditional Territory colours of black, white and ochre and play home games at the start of the season in a redeveloped Traeger Park in Alice Springs, before hosting its other home fixtures in a new Darwin stadium.
The looming Territory bid shapes as the most attractive in a marketplace that will likely draw pitches from Western Australia, New South Wales or Queensland and even potentially South Australia.
The WA football commission has previously held back on entering the fray for a third side.
But the introduction of Bunbury as an AFL ground to host North Melbourne games, a third side based at Hands Oval while playing some matches in Perth has grown in momentum.
Roberts said “substantial funding would be required” for a new team and it would need to be a powerhouse from the start, as Fremantle and West Coast have become.
The WA football commission holds the licences for both the Dockers and the Eagles.
“We need to make sure the clubs here in WA aren’t like some of the clubs in Victoria who are putting their hands out or struggling for members,” he said.
“We need to understand what is viable, and I think there’s still a lot of work to do to see if a third club would be supported here in WA.
“Any future arrangement would also require a review in how community football would be funded given the two local AFL clubs assist in funding local community football.
“We look forward to future discussions with the AFL and state government.”
The NT bid is working feverishly up north, with a taskforce that includes Crows great Andrew McLeod, Magpies legend Nathan Buckley and ex-AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou.
But even with some uncertainty lingering over Tasmania and its stadium, Bowden said his team is only focusing on being team 20, after the Devils.
“We stand 110 per cent behind the Tassie Devils footy club and with Tasmania having the 19th (team) opens the opportunity for the Territory to have the 20th,” he told this masthead.
“I want to see this future where these two proud states play each other in the national competition.
“We’ve got to do the work and keep doing it and keep presenting, keep believing in the dream so to speak.”
When asked if there was any chance of pushing past the Devils to become team No. 19, Bowden flatly said “we’re not considering that”.
“We think Tasmania have got the 19th and they’ll get there and we want to see them get there,” he said.
Demetriou knows plenty about AFL expansion, having overseen the addition of Gold Coast and GWS Giants during his time as the league boss.
He said the Territory was the “logical place for a 20th team” and after a year on the taskforce, money is not a fear.
“Of all the things that worry me about a 20th licence, it wont be the financial support that the NT 20th licence gets,” he said.
“There is a long way to go but it’s certainly worth the investment and the time required to invest in a 20th licence.
“People probably will argue that maybe WA could service a third team, maybe the northern states with what is happening with the NRL: do you need a team in Cairns for example? Really an NT team with the right build and the right patience would be a very good stand-alone proposition I would have thought.”
Outside of a third WA team and a top-end side, SANFL club Norwood has been raised given it hosts Gather Round matches, but the club has only denied reports it would pursue a licence.
Legendary coach Kevin Sheedy once suggested Newcastle and the Hunter Valley region should be a target for a new AFL team, and last week he said Cairns would will get a team, eventually.
“Whether we end up with 20 or 22 AFL clubs, I think it’s only a matter for time before we end up with a team (in Cairns) and a team in Darwin,” he said.
“It may not happen in my lifetime, but it’ll happen.”
The AFL has consistently stayed out of any talks or bids for a 20th team and has kept its narrow focus on ensuring Tasmania lands the 19th licence.
But AFL CEO Andrew Dillon did tour potential sights for a Darwin stadium in May and met with NT chief minister Lia Finocchiaro during his visit.
The AFL Commission also visited Darwin in May.
A whopping 10 potential sites have been floated for a Darwin stadium by the NT taskforce and an old Shell tank site a drop punt away from the waterfront was seen as the preferred location, but Bowden said a stadium call was still a work in progress.
The official team name is yet to be locked in but ‘Lightning’ is seen as an all-encompassing name given there are no crocodiles in Alice Springs, and the club colours will likely take on the traditional NT colours, as worn by representative sides.
A roof has not been discussed on a Darwin stadium, despite the hand-wringing around the enclosed Macquarie Point stadium in Hobart.
The ’Lightning’ team plans to create sporting hubs across the Territory to build a football factory, and keep more footy-mad young people in the game.
The 2032 goal fits alongside the end of the AFL’s blockbuster broadcasting rights deal.
Demetriou said including a 20th side that would guarantee 10 AFL matches a weekend would be a massive bargaining chip when the league next goes to the negotiating table.
Built around playing nine games a weekend, the current broadcasting deal netted $4.5 billion over seven years, so an extra game could be net the league hundreds of millions of dollars.
“You do the maths it works out as $4.5 billion over how many years for nine games a week. An extra game is probably worth $100m a year,’ Demetrious sketched out.
“If they are negotiating the broadcast agreement it would be good to know if there are 18, 19 or 20 teams so you can work towards a goal so if Tassie does get up in 2028, you want to be sitting around the negotiation table talking about 20 teams and 10 games and then you can talk about conferences and different finals structures. It would be very attractive I would have thought.”
Demetriou echoed Bowden when he said the NT side likely had to follow the Devils.
“Tassie is very important to the fabric of the league and the fabric of the country and the history of the game,” he said.
“I do hope the politicians can put their differences aside and just think about what this can do to transform the state.”
After decades of pushing forward and fighting pushback in Tasmania, Bowden said his taskforce was determined to have a rock solid case when it came time to put a genuine bid in front of the AFL and the other clubs in the competition.
The taskforce is aware of the recent federal government backing of an NRL team in Papua New Guinea, and the international political ramifications Darwin’s location on the edge of Asia presents.
A catch cry is that the Territory is not the outback, but Australia’s front door.
Bowden is hopeful that door can swing wide open for a new team.
“We have to present to the clubs when the time is right, when the opportunity’s there, and we have to be compelling,” he said.
“We think when it’s all laid out and properly understood, clubs will enjoy the experience of once every two years coming to play football either in the north in Darwin or in Alice Springs and it’ll be a magnificent experience for each club and their supporters to come to Australia’s front door.”
KEY PRIORITY FOR DEVILS IN POTENTIAL SIGNINGS
Leadership will be a top priority when Tasmania goes big-name hunting according to Devils chairman Grant O’Brien, as he tables and ambition for half of the new team to be made up of Tasmanians within a decade of its debut.
Tasmania will be given the chance to go after star players should they enter the AFL as planned in 2028, with a host of list and draft concessions to be announced.
Industry figures expect the Devils to be given free agency rights over off-seasons at the end of 2027 and 2028, allowing them to sign uncontracted players across the league to build the club.
A booklet pitch to potential players was sent out to player managers last week, selling golf courses and schools in Tasmania.
Both recent expansion sides, Gold Coast and GWS Giants, made big splashes when entering the competition, with the Suns landing the best player in the game at the time, Gary Ablett Jr, while the Giants signed young pair Phil Davis and Callan Ward.
O’Brien singled out Ward as “one of the best” signatures by an expansion club and said his team would likely search for similar players to guide the Devils through their early years.
“One of the benefits is to look at what others have done and the level of success or otherwise that they’ve enjoyed,” O’Brien told this masthead.
“There’s got to be a fit between the club and the environment and the person that you bring in. It’s not a matter of just being a star, it’s got to be someone that’s going to have the right sort of leadership qualities because inevitably, we’re going to start off young, so leadership is going to be important, not just star quality.
“I look at Callan Ward and I think he was one of the best. A young fella, still early in his career, but had the right sort of, unique in a way, leadership style.”
The Devils will eye off star Tasmanian talent across the league when building their playing list under recruiting head Derek Hine and list manager Todd Patterson.
The announcement of the incoming Tasmanian AFL and AFLW sides have seen a boost in the numbers of Auskick players on the Apple Isle and O’Brien said one of his biggest aspirations for the new club was to inspire more quality Tasmanian talent.
“We’re going to be the only state club in the competition so having an approach that it’s us against the Big Island is going to be enhances by having a lot of local talent who don’t want to leave, who want to play here,” O’Brien said.
“And (hopefully) we produce such volumes of talent that there’ll be opportunity for people to play elsewhere if they wish.
“That’s the health of the game that’s really got to be the legacy. And winning premierships is undeniably one of the serious aims for any footy club, but our responsibilities are wider than that.
“I’d like to see half our team in ten years is at least, made up of people that were born and raised in the state, men and women.”
In an extensive interview, O’Brien also said:
-The new club has “taken a really close look at Geelong as a reference point for tailoring the people that you bring to the club”. He said Tasmania was “an attractive place” and a “footy state”.
-Tasmania still plans to enter the VFL and VFLW competitions next year, with the hope of the AFLW team entering in 2027 now seen as highly unlikely.
-A signing of a senior AFL coach is planned to be ticked off “sometime next year”.
-The team plans to be “successful, not just competitive” from the start. “Successful in that early year or two might mean mid-table. It’s not just winning premierships in the first year or two like the (NBL team) Jack Jumpers did, they set a hurdle we can’t jump over I reckon. Maybe I shouldn’t be limiting but the reality is in the AFL, the teams are well established,” he said.
Originally published as Lightning strike: Northern Territory’s bid to become 20th team after Tasmania
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