Treasurer Peter Gutwein has announced the make-up of the new Football Tasmania Board which he says has two goals - to grow grassroots football state-wide and to forge a pathway to a Tasmanian AFL and ALFW team.

The new board, which includes AFL Tasmania chief executive Trisha Squires and representatives from across the state including umpires, will be chaired by retiring president of the Legislative Council Jim Wilkinson who played with South Melbourne in the VFL.

Mr Gutwein said it was not good enough that the participation rate n football had dropped 14 per cent and the board would work to see football become more popular.

"This is a momentous day for Tasmanian football," Mr Gutwein said.

"The social fabric of many communities are held together by football clubs.

"We will widen our base and with that strong base, we will actually aspire to have that AFL team of our own.

"This board will give real momentum to that."

Mr Gutwein said an AFL project team would be established to "chart a course" for a Tasmanian team. 

The deals with Hawthorn and North Melbourne run until the end of the 2021 season.

"The next deals will obviously be discussed in the context of the pathway that we lay out to an AFL team," Mr Gutwein said.

Mr Wilkinson said Tasmania had been talking about its own AFL team since the 1990s and the "time was right now" to consider it again.

He said it was important that the three regions spoke as one voice and that the board would be "aggressive" and would have a lot of "difficult conversations".

"You've got to remember with a number of the teams that are already representing their areas, Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney, pots of money have been poured into those teams to make them successful," Mr Wilkinson said.

"We don't want a team that is always looking to the AFL with our hands out.

"We want to be self-sufficient but we also need some support if we're going to put a team in the national league."

There are currently 18 teams in the AFL and Mr Wilkinson said some people would argue that a 20 team competition would be appealing.

He said the key was getting football into Tasmanian schools.

Ms Squires said she believed the board would be valuable in "uniting and growing Tasmanian football".

“We all have different ideas and different footy backgrounds but we all have a common love for footy and an ambition to grow and improve the game in our state,” she said.

“The Board captures a cross-section of passionate Tasmanian football voices and will provide a productive forum for ideas and strategy to be presented and work-shopped.

"We are all in this together.”

The members of the Football Tasmania Board include: