With apologies to the Northern Territory and ACT, the AFL is about to become whole.
On Saturday the federal government is expected to confirm $240 million of funding towards a new stadium in Hobart; this is viewed as the final hurdle for a Tasmanian team.
While the club presidents must still take a vote, it now seems inevitable a 19th AFL license is going to be handed out – and to the state so many footy fans have wanted to see it go to.
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Tasmania is footy heartland. It’s the cradle of Darrel Baldock, Ian Stewart, Nick Riewoldt and Matthew Richardson; the island that could elect a VFL best and fairest winner as premier in Ray Groom; the place even Cate Blanchett said plays “real football”.
But it’s also small. It’s cold. It’s perhaps not somewhere every 18-year-old kid wants to move to start his elite sporting career – we can say that but James Sicily can’t, sorry. And, most importantly for the other 18 AFL clubs, it’s not a massive market.
The last round of expansion, to the Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney, was about creating a foothold in a new frontier for Aussie rules. The former is working, with participation in Queensland through the roof, even if the club hasn’t had any success. The latter is the opposite; the Giants have made a Grand Final and had another year (2016) where they probably should’ve won the comp, but support in the famously tricky Sydney market remains an issue.
Because they were not designed as clubs taking advantage of a huge number of footy fans, they were never going to drive an immediate profit, but that hasn’t stopped the financing of the Suns and Giants from being contentious. They receive more help than almost every club, but that was part of the bargain – they’re an investment.
So then what are the Tassie Devils, or whatever they’ll be called? (It has to be the Devils, right?)
Financial documents created by groups backing a bid for a new sporting franchise are always rosy, but even they have conceded the Tasmanian club will be one of the smaller ones in the AFL.
In the 2020 report tabled to Tasmanian Parliament, it was suggested the club would need “approximately $15-17 million from an AFL dividend”. This would place them in the same region as the smaller Victoria clubs, with North Melbourne and St Kilda receiving around $18-19 million last year. Gold Coast and GWS led the way with $25 million each.
And again, that’s the optimistic view. So Tassie will be a small club that needs help – but like with the northern expansion sides, we’re accepting that for the good of footy more broadly.
But they’re also going to be a footy team; one that’ll need players, coaches, staff members and a fanbase. Plus, according to the AFL anyway, they need a whole new ground to play at.
These are the big details a Tasmanian team still needs to sort out before a ball is bounced.
THE STADIUM
In total, at least $715 million will be spent on the new 23,000-seat venue that’s to be constructed at Macquarie Point in Hobart.
A $240 million injection from the federal government will be combined with $375 million from the state government, led by premier Jeremy Rockliff, plus $15 million from the AFL (as part of a total $360 million of funding across a decade) and another $80 million-odd from private investors, borrowings against land sale or lease for commercial uses.
And this is the cheap option; it now appears the stadium will not be built with a roof, since that would add around $300 million to the budget. Plus, much of the argument for the stadium has been its utility for other sports like cricket – and you can’t play Test cricket under a roof, thanks to rules from the ICC.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who is expected to announce his government’s funding this weekend, has made the case the stadium will help boost the city of Hobart more broadly, in the same way the redeveloped Adelaide Oval has helped Adelaide.
“It should be seen not as a site of a potential footy stadium, but as a site for urban redevelopment that will enhance the city of Hobart and make it even better in the future, that will enhance economic activities,” Albanese said earlier this month.
“One of the things that I’ve said is that we need to look at housing, we need to look at the way that the beautiful foreshore at the Derwent operates.
“And that’s the context in which we’re considering the application, essentially, from the Tasmanian government.”
It was reported on Thursday evening the Labor government would also hand $65 million to upgrade Launceston’s UTAS Stadium, which may be used both in the interim (if the team begins play before 2029) and after the Hobart venue’s construction (so the team can play at both ends of the state).
The opposition parties in Tasmania have argued the funds for the stadium should instead be used on health, education and other important areas.
And while the stadium business case has argued it would generate $85 million in economic activity each year, that includes an optimistic claim 44 events would be held there each year. It’s unclear how this figure was reached, even if you include 11 AFL matches and AFLW fixtures.
BUILDING THE LIST… AND KEEPING THEM THERE
James Sicily wasn’t wrong. He was just the wrong person to say what he said.
As the Hawthorn captain pointed out this week, not every AFL player would want to live and work in Tasmania. So naturally there is an assumption that homegrown talent would play a major role in building the 19th list.
This is where the participation problems, and the lack of elite talent plucked from the Apple Isle, come in.
While 16 players have been drafted from Tasmania since 2015, there have only been few standouts; the most notable being Adelaide’s Chayce Jones, North Melbourne’s Tarryn Thomas and the Western Bulldogs’ Ryan Gardner. Carlton’s Lachie Cowan has also performed well in his first year at the level.
The previous decade of drafts were more fruitful, though. Others running around with Tassie heritage include Jack Riewoldt, Jeremy Howe, Brody Mihocek, Alex Pearce, Jake Kolodjashnij, Lachie Weller, Ben Brown, Toby Nankervis and Liam Jones.
All of them have had to leave the island to play at the elite level, but there’s almost a baked-in assumption that the next Riewoldt or Howe wouldn’t.
This is where the comparison to Geelong comes in. The Cats have done extremely well to turn what was once viewed as a recruiting disadvantage into something that works hugely in their favour, not just targeting Geelong Falcons products from across the AFL, but country kids in general.
The Cats are the closest thing the league has to a country footy team, yet they’re still in a big city and just an hour’s drive from Melbourne itself. This allows them to attract all sorts of players but particularly those who want to live a quieter lifestyle, most notably in recent years with Jeremy Cameron.
Tassie will give the Cats a competitor in this space, with any AFL player who would prefer to go fishing or hiking over clubbing given a fresh option to choose from, once they’re on the market.
“I just look at the Geelong footy club and the significant strategic advantage they’ve got by offering something different. They are an AFL professional team playing in a rural community. There’s something special about that,” North Melbourne coach and Tassie advocate Alastair Clarkson said this week.
“You say that’s not going to be too attractive for people, they just want the bright lights. Jeremy Cameron didn’t want the bright lights and neither did Patty Dangerfield, so it all depends on the individual and what they want.
“And if they set their club up in the right way down there, I don’t see it as an impediment. I actually see it as a competitive advantage that they’ve got. They haven’t got it over Geelong, but they’ve got it over 17 other clubs in the competition.”
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It’s a bit difficult to map out potential targets for a team that won’t be playing for at least five years, but let’s give it a go, assuming they enter in 2029 when the stadium is expected to be ready. (The team could also enter earlier and play at Bellerive Oval and/or York Park.)
Current Fremantle captain Alex Pearce and Geelong’s Jake Kolodjashnij would be 33; that’s the borderline. Adelaide’s Chayce Jones or North Melbourne’s Tarryn Thomas, the latter if he’s actually able to get everything together and continue his career, would be near the end of their prime at 29.
From there you’re looking at Carlton’s Lachie Cowan, who would be 25, plus a few other recent draftees.
The Age’s Marc McGowan, discussing a similar topic earlier this week, floated AFL Academy squad members Colby McKercher and Jack Callinan, plus a couple of Tasmanians who are studying in Melbourne, Ryley Sanders and 2024 prospect Nathaniel Sulzberger.
Of course, this team is also going to need a coach.
The most obvious answer in the current AFL landscape is Brisbane’s Chris Fagan, a proud Tasmanian – who is 61 now, and could easily finish up a decade of coaching the Lions before he heads up the 19th team.
“I love coaching the Lions,” he said on Thursday.
“If I’m not coaching the Lions by that point in time, and I could, I’d love to help Tassie out in some way, not necessarily to be the coach, it might be doing something else there.
“You never say never, but I’m totally committed to the Lions and that’s where I see my future until they decide I haven’t got one.”
But of course Fagan isn’t going to say he wants to coach another team while he’s still at one. He makes all the sense in the world as a Kevin Sheedy-type leader, particularly when his strengths are as a teacher of young men. There’ll be plenty of those in Tasmania’s first ever 23-man squad.
HOW DO WE AVOID A REPEAT OF THE GWS/GC DISRUPTED DRAFTS?
Even if Tasmania can convince existing AFL players to head south, they’re going to be young.
Gold Coast’s first ever AFL team had an average age of 22 years and 233 days, with 12 first-gamers plus veteran pick-ups like Gary Ablett, Josh Fraser, Campbell Brown and Jared Brennan.
GWS didn’t have as much success adding existing players, with a remarkable 17 first-gamers along with James McDonald (252 career games), Chad Cornes (240), Callan Ward (61), Rhys Palmer (54) and Phil Davis (19). Their average age was a preposterous 21 years and 123 days, dragged upwards by Cornes (32) and McDonald (35).
They constructed their lists by pre-drafting players, based on zones and underage prospects, along with picking up uncontracted players, while they also heavily compromised the 2010-12 drafts.
The Suns were given nine top-15 picks in 2010, with the Giants given the same in 2011 plus ‘mini-draft’ picks which they had to trade out – Jaeger O’Meara, Jack Martin, Jesse Hogan and Brad Crouch came into the league via this mechanism.
And of course, because the new clubs were so young, they were terrible on the field which ensured they had high picks in the next few drafts. It wasn’t until 2014 that a non-expansion club had the No.1 pick again, and even in that year, GWS had picks 4, 6 and 7.
The AFL has been workshopping ways to avoid these issues, which hurt clubs who happened to be on a downswing at the time of GWS and Gold Coast’s entries, because they didn’t have access to the same quality of talent as seen in your usual drafts.
The Age’s Caroline Wilson reported last July the league was considering sign-on bonuses for existing players who join Tasmania, priority picks for Tassie which it would have to trade for players, long-term access to Tassie players via an Academy system, and giving the other 18 clubs access to high picks in exchange for experienced players.
Former AFL recruiter Matt Rendell expected Tassie to be given heavy draft concessions, or be able to take players from rival clubs outside of a certain protected group.
“They might do a better version of what they did with the Brisbane Bears, each club might have to name their top 25 players and Tassie can take one player outside their best 25 players for nothing, you are not trading for them,” Rendell told News Corp.
“That might become part of the solution as well. So at least there’s 18 players.
“It’s more than likely going to be someone that has been there four or five years and hasn’t had much of a go that is looking just to play.
“There will be some good players outside the best 25 of each club, but they have got to want to go.
“It’s trying to get some senior players until these kids get 50 games into them …. it’s going to take three years.”
However it would seem unlikely the AFL would force veteran players to move to Tasmania against their will. Rendell’s suggested system would also mean Tasmania could not sign one big marquee recruit, as Gold Coast did with Gary Ablett.
If the other 18 clubs are smart, they’ll find loopholes or exploits in the handouts given to Tasmania. As just one example, if Tassie is given plenty of draft picks, they’ll need to trade some away to avoid having a huge class of players who all mature and need paydays at the same time – those picks could then be obtained more cheaply.
Whatever happens, the process is going to be complicated and leave plenty inside the AFL world unhappy – but unfortunately that’s just a reality of expanding a sports league.
Typically immediate success is unlikely, but it can happen. The NRL’s Dolphins shockingly won their first three games this year, while the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights made it all the way to the Stanley Cup finals in their inaugural campaign.
Either way Tasmania should avoid one problem that has cruelled the first decade on the Gold Coast and in western Sydney – fan support.
Not only will the Devils be well-supported in their home state, but the entire country should be rooting for their success. They’re an obvious second team for pretty much every footy fan, and while there’ll still be some complaints about the money being spent on them, it’s hard to argue against such a proud footy state finally being represented.
And plus, once we have team 19, all eyes will turn to finding team 20 so we can have a 10th game each weekend. We hear Joondalup is nice…
