Tasmanian footy legend Rodney Eade 'disappointed' at politicisation of state's AFL team bid

During the federal election campaign, the Liberals repeatedly criticised Labor's $25 million pledge to help a Tasmanian team get off the ground, playing on the state's parochial elements by saying it would be a "Hobart AFL team".

Pushed via television, newspaper and online advertisements, the argument went that the money would be better spent on improving the health system.

And the strategy appears to have paid off, with the Liberals picking up the North-West seat of Braddon and appearing to have won Bass too.

Internal Liberal Party polling conducted by Telereach during the campaign found that 72 per cent of respondents in Bass and 73 per cent of respondents in Braddon opposed Labor's AFL funding proposal. The poll had 520 respondents in Bass and 548 in Braddon.

Eade, a four-time premiership player for Hawthorn and former AFL head coach whose playing career began at Glenorchy, said the fact the issue had been made into a political football was "disappointing".

"If we're harnessing that North-South [divide], it's not going to work and we won't get [a team]," he told The Examiner. "That's going to harm our chances of getting a team."

"Then we'll be whingeing about it 20 years down the track.

"I don't mind the rivalry ... but when it becomes detrimental to the bigger picture on a grander scale [of] what we want to achieve ... I think we tend to cut our nose off to spite our face, unfortunately."

But Eade also noted that Tasmania had to unite and "work out [whether or not] we want a team as a whole".

"If we do, put politics aside and try to work together on the best way to do it," he said.

"Unfortunately, in Tasmania, the North would rather beat the South and the South would rather beat the North than for Tasmania to beat Victoria.

"And I find that so narrow-minded."

Former Brisbane Lions premiership star Alastair Lynch, who was born in Burnie, said Labor's funding commitment had been a positive development.

"I think it's an obvious stand [to make]," he said.

"The reality is that Tasmania deserves a team."

Tasmanian Liberal Senator Richard Colbeck, who will be sworn in as the nation's next Sport Minister on Wednesday, acknowledged that Tasmania was "football heartland" and therefore deserved its own team in the AFL.

But he said the government wouldn't waver in its insistence that the AFL itself should be the one to "pony up with the licence and the funding to support the new team".

"The government doesn't support a $25 million taxpayer-funded handout for a team," Senator Colbeck said.

"As Sport Minister I will be working closely with the Tasmanian Liberal government, the AFL, the Tasmanian footy public and respected figures like Rodney Eade to advance the cause of a Tasmanian AFL team and we will be doing so under the condition that it is the AFL, not the taxpayer, that should foot the bill."