If you were a gambler (which, judging by the number of adverts shown on the subject, nearly everyone must be), which sport do you think is most likely to next include Tasmania in a national competition?
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As it stands, the state's only national top-tier sporting league involvement remains in cricket and hockey which, it is certainly worth mentioning, despite a tiny population percentage, it has won both.
Meanwhile it is also worth mentioning, the Gold Coast has been handed teams in national soccer, rugby league, rugby union, baseball, basketball and football competitions, screwed up five and doing its darnedest to make it six.
But still competitions like the AFL, NRL, NBL and A-League risk prosecution under trades description legislation by using the words "National" or "Australian" in their titles despite ignoring one of the country's six states.
At least rugby union and netball dodge the accusation by using the all-encompassing and conveniently vague term "super" – in much the same way that the prefix also works for -hero, -market, or indeed -ficial.
In the past week, Tasmania has cropped up on the radar of national football, basketball and soccer organisations.
Basketball Australia chief executive Anthony Moore visited the state last week. Well, I say the state, in fact it was just Hobart, but for most mainland sporting organisations, that is effectively the same thing.
Moore visited six courts around the capital then fronted a press conference admitting he was shocked by the poor standard of Tasmania’s basketball facilities, labelling them the worst in the country.
Gillon McLachlan continues to fiddle while Rome burns, or Tasmania implodes in his case
It was hardly a ringing endorsement at a time when the Hobart Chargers are exploring the possibility of joining the NBL.
It was also a shame that Moore didn’t expand his horizons to Launceston – where the Silverdome has recently shown it can accommodate world-class netball and boxing and has everything required to add basketball to its repertoire – or the North-West, long regarded as the sport’s true Tasmanian heartland.
New air has also been pumped into the eternally-bouncy political football of a Tasmanian AFL team.
Seeing Burnie join Devonport and Western Storm in having to further weaken the State League while numerous other local footy teams also contemplate self-harm prompted many observers to suggest the solution may be to bring Tasmania into the “national” competition – albeit 121 years late.
As Tassie greats Matthew Richardson, Brad Green, Mitch Robinson, Russell Robertson and Rodney Eade led the chorus, AFL Tasmania’s newly-installed chief executive Trisha Squires issued a plea for help to her national counterpart.
Gillon McLachlan confirmed he would make a rare visit to the troubled state but, much like the slightly less powerful Emperor Nero about 2000 years earlier, he continues to fiddle while Rome burns, or Tasmania implodes in his case.
Eade was among those to draw a link between footy’s decline and soccer’s rise in his home state.
Devonport is a prime example. While the city's major footy team cannot find the cattle to fill a competitive State League side, its major soccer team has both the quantity and quality to win the Tasmanian league.
The splendidly named and maintained sliceofcheese website, which proclaims itself Tasmania’s official soccer blog, made the same point this week in an article headlined “AFL’s Negligence Is FFA’s Opportunity”.
Citing the 5000-plus fans that attended Valley Road in torrential rain for FFA Cup games against Lambton Jaffas and Bentleigh Greens in 2016, it asked: “If a city the size of Devonport can garner that kind of support for two semi-professional sides meeting midweek in the middle of a monsoon, don’t tell me an A-League team couldn’t draw the necessary fans to be sustainable in Tasmania.”
In direct contrast to its footy equivalent, Tasmania’s soccer body this week declared it was no longer interested in staging fly-in A-League games and would instead focus its attention on pursuing the state’s own team.
Rather conveniently, this came at precisely the same time that Football Federation Australia chief executive David Gallop bemoaned the competition’s poor crowds and backed the need to increase the number of teams from 10 to 12.
Speaking to The Examiner six months ago, Netball Tasmania’s chief executive Aaron Pidgeon also indicated his desire to see the state bid for a franchise in the sport’s top-flight Super Netball competition, building on its existing participation in the second-tier (but confusingly-named) Australian Netball League.
Meanwhile Baseball Australia chief executive Cam Vale also told The Examiner a Tasmanian side in the Australian Baseball League could happen within two years.
So while AFL sides Hawthorn and North Melbourne continue to stage handsomely-subsidised home fixtures in Tasmania, it seems increasingly possible that rival sporting franchises may soon be playing away matches here.