To date I have not been a believer but right now I am prepared to be.
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But we do have to get on with it once and for all.
If Tasmania is to have its own AFL team or teams based here then the key stakeholders - the ones that can make a difference - should make the call soon.
Otherwise it's just more false hope - or grandstanding. I am happy to be a litmus paper ready to give the right result if there is a serious case to be made.
But from the outset - the latest one at least - let's not shoot ourselves in the foot by pandering to unnecessary compliance requirements. And number one in that regard is facilities.
Brett Godfrey is absolutely right when he says that any concept will only work if it's a fully Tasmanian approach not one centred on either Launceston or Hobart.
That means a Tasmanian team would presumably play home games out of both.
Assuming the usual AFL home and away rostering system applies to a new team that means five or six games at each venue each year. That's not that different to now - where both York Park and Bellerive are perfectly fine, excepting possibly for car parking, for locals and visitors alike.
Any suggestion that they are not up to what is bandied about as "AFL standard" should be swiftly set aside.
We are not talking about the MCG or Docklands which staged multiple games on most weekends of the season.
We are talking about half a dozen games per year. Tasmanian fans traditionally turn up immediately prior to the action.
What can look like a disappointing crowd one minute - can become a record challenger within ten more. They leave straight after.
So the challenge is to keep them happy for three hours for six days a year. That's 18 hours per annum per venue that we ought to be concerned about.
Plain and simple that cannot and should not justify millions of dollars being spent on facility upgrades.
Subsidising give-away cushions and opening a couple more entry points would be petty cash compared to what the infrastructure boffins would say we have to have.
Thanks to Chris Fagan for being just about the only one who is on to this.
The same applies to off field training facilities.
Unlike all of the other cities in which AFL teams are based Tasmania does not have a huge demand for elite performance training centres. One in each city is adequate and can be shared by the AFL players with our other top level sportspeople.
This nonsense that every AFL team has to have its own high performance centre costing tens of millions of dollars needs to be challenged.
So with those two potential deal-breaking costs eliminated, the call should mostly be made on what it is actually going to cost to run an AFL team - or two of them if we are to make a foray into the top men's and women's competition.
Sponsors and benefactors will come and go - so too boards of directors however the new entity might be run.
So the call in the end needs to be made by the AFL and the Tasmanian Government. Both need to be genuinely committed - and for the long term.
Putting the dollars to one side - the rest is very much about culture.
In Tasmania we have just about stopped playing AFL in schools - certainly in the manner to which we were accustomed to a generation ago and before that.
Physical activity must surely be at an all-time low from the reports and anecdotal evidence that pop-up every day.
There is no longer a broad base from which sporting talent can emerge. Much of what is done now is target driven - and expensive.
Will Tasmanians be interested in supporting a footy team if they or those around them are not engaged? Money won't buy the passion necessary to make this work.
If it happens, it's going to take much time and patience - much more so from the first bounce of the first game than in the period to make that happen.
But please let's focus and reach the point where we can believe.
