Opinion: Looming Queensland clash has echoes of 2004

THE Gabba is the Lions’ home ground and if their women’s side earns a home grand final, it’s only fair that’s where it is played.

Kaitlyn Ashmore of the Lions. Photo: Jamie Hanson

REMEMBER the 2004 preliminary final?

Let’s hope the AFL does because no one up here has ever forgiven them for forcing the Lions to travel to the MCG to play a preliminary final they should rightfully have hosted at the Gabba.

The Gabba is the Lions’ home ground and if their women’s side earns a home grand final, it’s only fair that’s where it is played.

Lions players take the field at Brisbane’s South Pine Complex. Photo: Getty Images

Stadiums Queensland must come to the party and look after their major Gabba tenants.

The whole weekend is shaping as a mess of the AFL’s doing with their lack of planning around the grand final of the inaugural women’s competition.

Why schedule the game for the first week of the AFL season and not the week before when there is a free weekend between the end of the JLT Series and the start of the premiership?

You can only assume that no one at HQ considered for a moment the game would be played outside Melbourne.

They probably saw it as a nice MCG or Etihad Stadium curtain raiser.

Now there is the very real possibility of what were supposed to be two huge occasions, an AFL season-launching Q Clash between the Lions and the Suns and the historic first ever women’s grand final, cannibalising each other.

It’s not fair on either club. The Lions are basically being forced to ask their fans to choose between men and women.

Lions players Nicole Hildebrand and Kaitlyn Ashmore want a Gabba final. Photo: Darren England.

Logic says the game should be played at Metricon Stadium. It makes more economic and logistic sense.

While buses running down the highway full of partying Lions fans celebrating the women’s premiership on their way to the Q Clash sounds good — it won’t happen.

Two games on the one day in two different cities is a stretch for the staunchest fans.

While a celebration of Queensland footy at Metricon Stadium would be a day to remember.

Brisbane could see the option to play the game as a Q Clash curtain raiser as the opportunity to outnumber the Suns at their home ground. And for their AFL side to acknowledge the women.

But they want the game at the Gabba and that’s their prerogative.

It’s only fair they get their wish.

Originally published as Opinion: Looming Queensland clash has echoes of 2004