Tasmanian football crisis deepens as Burnie pulls pin in TSL

THE crisis engulfing Tasmanian football seems bottomless with the Burnie Dockers Football Club not taking part in the TSL for 2018.

THE crisis engulfing Tasmanian football seems bottomless with the Burnie Dockers Football Club not taking part in the TSL for 2018.

After Devonport dropped out of the TSL late last year and Burnie also confirming they will not be fielding a team, the North-West Coast now has no club representing it in the state’s premier competition.

The news that Burnie will not have a TSL team in 2018 comes a day after AFL Tasmania announced that Trisha Squires will be taking over from Rob Auld as the organisation’s chief executive.

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Burnie president Steve Dowling said it was not viable for his club to field only one team because it put the club at risk of losing more numbers and having to possibly forfeit some games.

“It is not a decision made lightly by the board of the Burnie Football Club,” Dowling said.

“It has been an exhaustive process and the bottom line is we can’t field two sides and a one team statewide model would have left us extremely vulnerable.”

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Newly appointed AFL Tasmania boss Trisha Squires enters her new job with a major problem with one section of the state having no representation in the TSL.

“This is not just a Burnie problem, it is a North-West region problem,” Squires said.

“The facts can’t be denied that the North-West is under stress.”

“The North-West region has lost 3000 men aged between 0-45 in the last five years, 10 per cent of people on the North-West Coast play football so that is roughly 300 players and 12 teams that have departed the region.

“The population has shifted and the structure of football on the North-West Coast has not adjusted enough to combat the change.”

The rumours that Burnie may not field a team in 2018 were confirmed when they dropped a bombshell by forcing AFL Tasmania to withhold the re-release of the 2018 state league fixture until the club had decided whether it could field a team this season.

Now the club has officially withdrawn from the TSL for the upcoming season, leaving the league with seven teams.