‘Great things’ on way for us, says AFL Tasmania chief Trisha Squires

TASMANIAN football fans have reason to smile with AFL Tasmania’s chief revealing “great things” are on the way from the AFL steering committee

TASMANIAN football fans have reason to smile with AFL Tasmania chief Trisha Squires revealing “great things” are on the way from the AFL steering committee in just four weeks.

Following AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan’s fact-finding mission to Devonport on Thursday, Squires said the steering committee examining the state of the game in Tasmania was making solid progress.

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McLachlan has a self-imposed June 30 deadline to announce the details for the future of Tasmanian football.

It may include a better State League or no State League at all, a VFL team, a full-time Tasmanian team in the TAC Cup, more funding, and possibly the blueprint for a future Tasmanian AFL team.

Squires said there had been up to seven models for change being explored, and without being able to divulge specifics, said good things were ahead.

“There’s going to be some great things come out,” Squires said. “We wouldn’t be spending this much time, we wouldn’t have the AFL CEO visiting our state, if we weren’t taking this seriously and I think we’ll get a positive result.

“We are never going to please every single person in Tasmania.

“But we are going to do everything we can to get as close as possible and do the right thing for the sport we love here in Tassie. We all love footy, our kids play footy and they’ve got a safe environment to do that, and we will make sure they can continue to do that in a proud footy state.”

McLachlan met with the presidents of former TSL clubs Burnie and Devonport to hear the issues that forced them out of the State League.

They are not likely to be back any time soon.

“At this stage there is not an appetite for them to come back because there are a lot of barriers — the travel and the players aspiring to play in a state league,” Squires said.

Burnie president Steve Dowling told McLachlan the Dockers would not be back in the TSL any time soon.

“Gillon McLachlan is certainly having a good look at it but we won’t be back in the foreseeable future,” Dowling said. “The reason Burnie made the decision was for the survival of the club and it would be counter-productive to take that punt again.”

Tasmanian Football Council chairman Paul Reynolds doubted any side but Burnie or Devonport could be the TSL option on the North-West Coast.

“I wouldn’t have thought so, given that Burnie and Devonport have the population centres — if a team is going to come it would be from one of those two clubs,” Reynolds said.

“It would be difficult to try to create a new club that doesn’t have a history or a base.”