United We Stand: Show your support for a Tasmanian AFL team now

Tasmanians have been asked to answer a call to arms, to pledge their support for our own team in the AFL and AFLW. We need 50,000 pledges. Show your support here now.

TODAY all Tasmanians have been asked to answer a call to arms, to pledge their support for our own team in the AFL and AFLW.

In a special campaign being launched simultaneously out of all three of Tasmania’s daily newspapers, a new website is live right now where you can add your name to those calling for Tassie teams.

The unitedwestand.com.au website has been built by the government taskforce building the business case to present to the AFL in the hope of winning a provisional licence by the end of this year.

They believe we need 50,000 pledges for the AFL to finally take us seriously.

ADD YOUR NAME TO THE LIST HERE

Premier Will Hodgman has urged Tasmanians to get behind the push.

“The time has well and truly come for Tasmania to enter the AFL and AFLW with a team of our own. However, to achieve this long held goal, Tasmania must stand united,” Mr Hodgman said.

“I encourage every Tasmanian to get behind the AFL Taskforce’s United We Stand campaign and register their support.”

“It’s important now that all Tasmanians who share in this dream also stand up to send a very strong message to the AFL they can no longer ignore us.”

Tasmanian and AFL legend Nick Riewoldt has thrown his support behind the Nick Riewoldt unitedwestand.com.au pledge campaign.

WHY TASMANIA DESERVES AN AFL TEAM

One of the many uniquely great things about Tasmania is the passion we all have for the region we choose to live in.

But we all know that no matter where on this island we call home, we are Tasmanians first and foremost.

And that’s what those calling the shots at AFL House don’t seem to understand.

They see our glorious parochialism as a bad thing, as a reason we can’t have our own team in the AFL and AFLW.

Our state, they argue, is hopelessly divided.

Remember former AFL chairman Mike Fitzpatrick’s challenge to our state when he departed the job in early 2017?

It was simple: to resolve the North-South divide.

Fast forward 12 months and current AFL chief Gillon McLachlan declared last year that the pathway towards a team relied on representative footy in our state having “one brand and hopefully getting unity”.

As the editor of a newspaper it is your job to understand the sentiment in your community. And so the fact all three newspapers — the Mercury, the Examiner in Launceston and the Advocate on the Coast — call for a team on the same day shows that what is more important than the endless speculation about where a team might be based in Tasmania and where it might play its home games is this: that our state deserves its own team.

This combined push shows perhaps more than any other action we can take that no matter the region we come from, that we are united in this call for our own team in the “national” competition of the sport we started playing here in 1864 — and to which our state has since bred and delivered to the elite mainland competition more than its fair share of superstars.

This is, then, a move today that sends a powerful message to those Melbourne-based footy powerbrokers that their primary argument against this dream that we share has no merit.

You can do your bit too.

Head to unitedwestand.com.au today and pledge your support.

Let’s all stand as one to send a clear message to the mainland.

Let’s show them that today, Tasmania stands united for an AFL team.

Now is the time.

ADD YOUR NAME TO THE LIST HERE

Originally published as United We Stand: Show your support for a Tasmanian AFL team now