As Tasmania pushes for AFL team with league HQ, North Melbourne is caught in the middle

As Tasmania ups the pressure in the campaign to secure its own AFL licence, the state’s cotenant is finding itself between a rock and a hard place.

Brady Rawlings (left), captain Jack Zeibell, North Melbourne chairman, Ben Buckley, coach Rhyce Shaw and CEO, Ben Amarfio pose during a North Melbourne Picture: ROBERT CIANFLONE/GETTY IMAGES

NORTH Melbourne is feeling more like pawns than Kangaroos as it is increasingly being used as a chess piece in the push for a Tasmanian AFL team.

New Roos chief executive Ben Amarfio says it is up to his club to become so strong it can’t be pushed around the chess board by any state or organisation.

Both the Roos and Hawthorn have a deal to play four home games each in Tasmania until the end of next season while the Taskforce’s business case for a Tasmanian AFL team is currently at league headquarters.

The Roos deal, via the Spirit of Tasmania operator of the TT-Line, has never been fully revealed but believed to be worth more than $2 million a year – a substantial stream of revenue for not one of the AFL’s biggest clubs.

“When you are a team that has elected to play four of its 11 home games in another market then you open yourself up to be put in that (pawn) position,” Mr Amarfio said.

“The challenge for us as a club, less so for Hawthorn obviously but more so for us, is we want to be a club that stands on its own two feet, we want to be a club that is self-determinant so we are not at the whim or the beck and call of anyone.”

Last week, Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein told the Sunday Tasmanian the Government could not finalise deals with either club until there was clarity on the state’s push for its own team from the AFL, while the opposition also revealed in the Sunday Tasmanian a policy of not underwriting future North Melbourne games without a provisional licence or commencement date from the AFL.

Mr Amarfio will meet with the Government and the opposition later this week as well as other Tasmanian stakeholders, but said he was left confused by the opposition’s policy.

“If the argument is that, ‘we (Tasmania) shouldn’t be supporting AFL clubs, we should be supporting our own,’ well I get that argument,” he said.

“But then to say, ‘we will support one club and not the other,’ I don’t really understand the logic behind that, but maybe someone can explain that to me.”

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The Roos, as part of its shared AFLW licence with Tasmania, hosted the Adelaide Crows at North Hobart Oval Saturday, while the men’s team will play Sydney at Kingston’s Twin Ovals on Monday ahead of the club’s community camp around the state.

“We are very cognisant of the challenges that football faces in Tasmania and the growth of other sports, and we want to jealously guard our patch,” he said.

“Tassie is a football state and we want it to remain a football state and we want to do everything we can to help football flourish in Tasmania.”

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