AFL team is now up to us

IT remains a long way off, but there is finally some momentum behind the push for a stand-alone Tasmanian team in the AFL.

AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan

IT remains a long way off, but there is finally some momentum behind the push for a stand-alone Tasmanian team in the AFL.

The latest voice to support the long-overdue reward for Tasmania’s love of footy was the respected Western Bulldogs president Peter Gordon. As the Mercury reported yesterday, Mr Gordon said a Tassie team made sense, as: “When you look at the history of what Tasmania has contributed to football in the past 100 years, and when you think about the best ways to reinvigorate and assist that state and junior footy in that state, it’s certainly something that the AFL commission should consider.”

His is another welcome voice behind the push. But it is also now only the latest of what is now a genuine groundswell of support. Over the weekend, the federal National Party jumped on board (having been pushed to it by new Nat and Tasmanian senator Steve Martin). Sports Minister Bridget McKenzie said: “Despite being a Victorian myself, I would love to see an AFL team and especially an AFLW team from Tasmania in the national competitions.” The Nationals launched a website — t23.com.au — to gather names in support of an AFL licence for Tasmania from 2023.

That support followed the State Government now thinking things are getting so real that it was worth establishing a Football Tasmania Board, which is currently developing plans for an official push for a Tasmanian AFL and AFLW team.

Heck, things have moved so quickly you can even engage the AFL boss Gillon McLachlan in the conversation these days. That’s a far cry from just over a year ago, when Mr McLachlan was so oblivious to the detail of footy in our state that he denied there were any problems with the sport locally. After the Mercury’s strong campaign to convince him otherwise, he established — and personally chaired — a steering committee into how to fix football in Tassie.

That steering committee delivered cash for talent pathways and a range of other support for the local competitions, but the big outcome was the announcement that there would be one team branding for every Tasmanian representative team from under-12s up, that we would have a team in the under-18s TAC Cup — and that Tasmania would be granted a “provisional” licence to compete in the VFL from 2021.

What does that word provisional mean? Essentially that before we get it, the AFL would first need to be convinced that we as a state can address some of those age-old questions that have always held us back in terms of a united bid for a single team. Will the team be based in the North or the South? Where will it play its home games? Do we have the talent to make it competitive? What is the commercial proposition? How willing will Tasmanians actually be to drop their allegiances to existing AFL clubs and support a local team? The list goes on.

The key outcome of the committee was then that the AFL has challenged Tassie to get our act together. There is a big risk here. A failure to support a successful VFL team will be seen at AFL House as proof that they have been correct: Tassie is not ready for the big time.

All those behind the push for a Tasmanian AFL team should therefore reflect carefully on Mr McLachlan’s words after he announced the steering committee findings: “Right now Tasmanian football is fractured and fragmented. The talent pathways are fragmented. Community football inter-relationships aren’t working. We need to deal with them and build the base, and get Tasmanian football united before Tasmania is in a position to bid for a licence.”

In other words, our future is in our hands.