Eddie McGuire on the benefits of the Tasmania Devils and their proposed new stadium
Former Collingwood president Eddie McGuire has warned that the goodwill of other AFL clubs towards the Tasmania Devils may start to wear thin unless action is taken soon.
Eddie McGuire has warned Tasmania that it risks wasting the “goodwill” of the AFL world if it doesn’t move forward with the Devils AFL team.
Speaking at the Tasmania Devils’ ‘In the Devils Corner’ event, McGuire also noted that the state could benefit in future by lobbying the federal government with the help of the AFL “team”.
“At some stage you have to push the button and say go, always in life you have to take that first step and take the big step,” McGuire said.
“If you’re going to do to it, you have to say yes.
“At the moment there’s so much goodwill in the AFL world but self interest will come into it at some stage and the stretching of the player pool and the TV rights and people start to get nervous.
“It’s a very big investment by the football world into Tasmania which will have such a positive reaction and grow the pie even more, but we need to get on with it, because at this stage it’s starting to drag on and we need to do more with it.
“Hopefully today is one of those days where we can say right, here is the road map forward, let’s get on it and go for it.
“Everyone’s had their say, we’ve got the best options, we’ve taken everyone’s thoughts into account, but we have to get on with it.
“I’ve got an old saying in life, you can be handing out gold bars in Salamanca Place and someone will say it’s too heavy, you’ve got to take the opportunity and go with it.”
AFL CEO Andrew Dillon said earlier this week that the Devils’ provisional licence would be granted by the end of the year as long as the state government goes ahead with the construction of a new stadium in Hobart.
Much of the debate about the Devils has centred around the proposed stadium, but McGuire explained the importance of a new roofed-stadium and the far-reaching benefits it could bring.
“Not only are you going backwards if you’re standing still in stadia and in sport but you’ve got to be picking the market and going forward,” McGuire said, noting that Waverley Park’s demise began when the MCG introduced a coloured scoreboard just a year after it had added a state-of-the-art monochrome scoreboard.
“It all started to fall apart because they didn’t go hard enough soon enough and put the infrastructure in first go,” McGuire said of Waverley Park.
“Now the MCG’s there, it has the NFL falling over itself to play a game, the biggest names in the world want to do concerts because that’s where concerts are going, big venues.
“Already down here we’re talking about the roof but in the rest of the world they’re talking about the surface as well, so you can have a surface that can disappear and you’ve got Taylor Swift one night, Tasmania v Collingwood the next … that’s where stadia is going and it’s getting bigger.
“We have to make this work for everybody, but the knock on effect of economic prosperity that these stadiums bring is absolutely profound.”
The former Collingwood president detailed the effects stadiums around the world, such as the Bernabeu in Spain or Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in England, were having on the communities in which they are based.
“Tasmanians deserve the opportunity to be part of the big-time, when you turn on the telly to watch the Tasmania Devils, you don’t want to be going back in time, you want to be going forward in time,” he said.
“To see Tasmania as this progressive, confident, successful state that it is and can be.”
Much of the drawback from those against a new stadium in Tasmania is centred around a belief the money could instead be put toward addressing the public health system, education and homelessness.
To that, McGuire said an AFL team could be beneficial to the general public in more ways than it yet realises.
“It’s such an enormous opportunity … we had a homeless situation in Melbourne where the Victorian government of the day cut the funding to the salvation army,” McGuire recalled.
“Who stepped in? The Collingwood Football Club, as a result of that 300 people every night sleep in Collingwood-supplied houses … all the AFL clubs do these philanthropic pursuits, not because they need to, but because they want to, football’s a giant community.
“The people who are concerned about what might go wrong need to look at what might go right. You can look anywhere in the world and see what big sports brings to a town and to a state.
“I’m confident the AFL and the Tasmania Devils can do that here.”
McGuire also spoke of the benefits that being part of the AFL “team” could bring to the state.
“What we need to collectively do is stop the arguments and go find the money, I think the federal government owes Tasmania,” McGuire said.
“They’ve got to put a lot of money into Queensland for the Olympic Games as they should but I think Tasmania over the years has been underdone.
“If you go in and ask for help all the time, (the federal government) will help you give you a few crumbs off the table, but if you’re in the big league with the AFL, things start to happen, and there is a collective lobbying situation because you’re part of a team, we want you to be big.
“Queensland are going to have an Olympic stadium the Brisbane Lions are going to call home, the MCG is going to be redeveloped, so you don’t want to turn around and be stuck with this ground, and you’ve got the newest team and the worst ground for 30 years.
“The decision that is made today lasts 30 years in stadium development.”
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