Time for Tasmania to call the AFL's bluff

This is approximately how much the Hawthorn and North Melbourne deals cost Tasmanian taxpayers.

This figure does not include the money those same taxpayers have invested to create and maintain two immaculate AFL venues.

And yet Tasmania not having its own team is Tasmania’s fault, according to the AFL.

Yep, I’ve had another few weeks to digest outgoing AFL chairman Mike Fitzpatrick’s comments on the competition’s most gullible revenue stream, but time only serves to lodge them ever tighter in the throat.

As demonstrated by Fitzpatrick’s observation that parochialism is the only thing holding Tasmania back, the AFL’s attitude to the state is, at best, dismissive, but more accurately, contemptuous.

Tasmania gives the national winter sport its best young athletes, a legion of the most loyal supporters and that not inconsiderable annual financial contribution and yet is brushed aside like first-year Auskickers by a rampaging Luke Hodge.

The AFL has played on Tasmania’s footballing passions throughout their shared dealings, safe in the knowledge that the state always has been, and probably always will be, a diehard footy hotbed.

In 2011, when North Melbourne and Hawthorn both renewed contracts to play in the state, then AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou said this could only help the state’s push for its own team.

“I think the future is bright for AFL in Tasmania,” he said.

But not quite as bright as the future for the AFL because of Tasmania.

As self-proclaimed Tasmanian advocate Saul Eslake put it so eloquently: “It’s like throwing a hungry dog a few scraps from the table and hoping it will go away with its tail wagging.”

Because Tasmania is packed full of passionate footy fans, they will always welcome sides playing games here, but continuing that arrangement only takes the state further away from aspirations of its own team.

And whenever the AFL finds itself in a corner, with the stakes rising, it plays its trump: the parochial card.

Well maybe it’s time to call the league’s bluff.

As Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman said in response to Fitzpatrick’s predictable comments: “I think it’s an excuse to say that Tasmanians wouldn’t know where to play the games, that’s just nonsense.”

There is no denying that parochialism exists in Tasmania, but so do two other ‘p’s: passion and pride.

So envisage this…

A Tasmanian AFL team playing home games evenly between UTas Stadium and Bellerive Oval.

The state’s population distribution is roughly 50 per cent either side of Oatlands. With each half supporting their “home” venue and the loyal ultras travelling to both, there is no reason why the games could not be well supported.

Tasmanians getting behind a Tasmanian cause in Tasmania – novel I know.

Traditional sparring partners The Examiner and The Mercury might even unite as one voice. OK, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. 

The new entity could be given first dibs on the best young players emerging from the state, affording the next generation of Thurlows, Birchalls, Lonergans, Riewoldts and Kolodjashnijeseses (spellcheck really didn’t like that one) a chance to combine achieving their sporting dream with representing their home state.

A head coach shouldn’t be a problem. Three of the existing 18 are already from Tasmania with the last two State League premiership winners Zane Littlejohn and Aaron Cornelius leading the charge to join them.

Admittedly, the $6 million the state currently pays the AFL for games here is a drop in Bass Strait compared to the annual operating costs of a team in the competition, but at least it’s a start.

Of course, none of this can happen without the AFL’s approval and even investment, and that’s about as likely as Stephen Dank being appointed head of its ethics commission.

Why would the AFL want to pay for something that up to now Tasmanian taxpayers have willingly done for them?

As Franklin Liberal MP Nic Street pointed out during the Fitzpatrick fallout: “It is not Tasmania’s fault we don’t have an AFL team of our own, it is the AFL’s.”

Incidentally, the best thing about a dismissive and downgrading comment like Fitzpatrick’s is how it fires up angry politicians to freely voice their honest opinions, something normally considered contrary to their job description.

A competitive team would also require the same sort of red-carpet draft incentives afforded to Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney but, again, that would require AFL co-operation.

About as likely as Tania Hird becoming secretary to the newly-appointed head of the ethics commission.

But to pull that annual contribution when the existing contracts with Hawthorn and North Melbourne expire in 2021 might at least make the AFL realise how much it takes Tasmania for granted.

And it might help expose what a misnomer the “AFL” is for a competition which remains the Mainland Football League all the while Tasmania is excluded.

And another thing: funny how an intrastate rivalry is used as an excuse to deny Tasmania its own team but was actually rolled out as justification for second teams in South Australia, Western Australia, Sydney and Queensland.