Jack Riewoldt kick starts Tassie AFL team community engagement in Queenstown

Jack Riewoldt has started his community engagement events for Tasmania’s AFL team. Here’s how you can be involved and why he sees similarities to an American sport juggernaut.

Richmond premiership player Jack Riewoldt at the famous gravel oval at Queenstown, West Coast. December 14, 2023. Picture James Bresnehan

Tasmania’s AFL team ambassador Jack Riewoldt wants the state’s new flagship sporting organisation to become one of the biggest community sports clubs on the planet and the first building block fell into place at Queenstown’s famous gravel oval on Thursday night.

It was the opening session of nine Community Engagement events Riewoldt and the football club will hold as the triple premiership Richmond Tiger pieces together the Fabric of the state’s AFL club.

Riewoldt addressed the gathering of West Coast locals in a formal opening to the evening, with Tasmanian AFLW player Abbey Green on one side and Tasmanian AFL commentator Alister Nicholson on the other.

Riewoldt and Green told the story of their ascendance to the AFL and AFLW respectively and how their journeys would have been so different had Tasmania’s team dream come true much earlier.

The event then went informal as attendees chatted about their footy experiences, from a Queenstown player told he would be of more use as a boundary umpire to another who broke his ankle in the preliminary final and the next week rucked in the grand final.

Riewoldt was delighted with the response to his opening event of his crusade.

“Going round the whole state and engaging with the people of Tasmania is fundamental to building a team,” Riewoldt said.

“It’s a big business and we’re going to be a multimillion club worth multi millions of dollars to our supporters and members, but fundamentally we still just want to be the biggest community sporting team in Australia, if not the world.

“And that comes with your connections to your people.

“There’s some really great examples of this round the world – the Green Bay Packers are owned by the members, and we want to be a football club that plays, resembles and behaves the way the Tasmanian people want us to and represent what they are loyal to.”

The Queenstown event will be followed by Wynyard on Friday night (6.30pm) and Devonport on Sunday, which includes a footy clinic for juniors.

In the New Year, Riewoldt will hold events in Hobart (January 12), Kettering (January 13), Swansea (January 14), Oatlands (January 19), Scottsdale (January 20) and Launceston (January 21).