"YOU need $45 million," AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan told Tasmanians hoping for a spot of own-teamness.
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"That's the brutal reality right now. The economy and scale of growth mean they financially can't support their own team."
So he was right. He didn't say Tasmania was "too poor".
He just used different words to say it.
And deep down, most Tasmanians would agree that he's also right about the state's economy.
Brace yourself. There's a "but" coming at you like Luke Hodge.
But that figure of $45 million is less than half what the AFL is believed to have invested into the Gold Coast Suns.
Exact numbers are elusive, but it can be assumed that Greater Western Sydney is not far behind.
And on the same day that Launceston attracted what will rightly be considered a disappointing crowd of 11,731 for the visit of the bottom team, neither the Giants nor the Suns could even break five figures.
As The Age columnist Martin Flanagan pointed out after McLachlan's comments to the National Press Club: "Half the clubs in the AFL are 'too poor' to be in the national competition. These clubs are only in the AFL because the AFL subsidises them. "So the question is not whether places are 'too poor' to have a team - the question is whether the AFL chooses to subsidise them and why."
Another proud Tasmanian advocate, Saul Eslake, added that if five million Victorians could support 10 AFL clubs, why can't 500,000 Tasmanians support one?
The figures certainly add up, which is probably a good sign for an economist.
The genuine positive to come out of McLachlan's comments in Canberra are that he acknowledges Tasmania merits its own team.
This is a significant advance on his predecessor, Andrew Demetriou, who claimed nobody had ever asked for one, despite having once received an entire delegation from the Tasmanian government asking that very question.
Of more concern is the timeframe. Demetriou infamously said "not in my time" when asked the question (again) by journalists in Launceston in 2012.
That turned out to be another two years.
When appointed to replace him last June, McLachlan said a Tasmanian team was a decade away. Last week, that became "10 to 15 years".
In reality, a Melbourne premiership is more likely than a Tasmanian team.
The Hawks have just re-signed their deal with the Tasmanian government for another five years. It can be reasonably expected that North Melbourne's Hobart deal will soon get a similar extension.
That gives Tasmania until 2021 to come up with a viable alternative to the current arrangement of two fly-in clubs playing a total of seven matches at two venues.
Around the same time the Hawks contract was sealed for $19 million, the AFL signed an Australian record television broadcast deal worth $2.5 billion.
And yet North Launceston president Thane Brady believes the AFL invests more money in NSW and Queensland in a week than Tasmania gets in a year.
Only by the league sharing its gigantic wealth with its genuine heartlands will the national competition have any hope of living up to its name, and sadly there are few signs of that happening any time soon.