WE COULD WHINGE OR JUST DO IT

Time to show how we care

HE Mercury concedes it has often taken a cheeky approach in recent months to AFL boss Gillon McLachlan and his commitment — or otherwise — to Tasmanian footy. But, credit where it’s due. Yesterday’s announcement by Mr McLachlan at the end of the steering committee process sparked by the Mercury’s Save our Footy campaign is a solid one.

It was also the closest the AFL boss has ever come to saying Tasmania will one day have its own team in the elite national competition, the goal we must all remain committed to as we continue on this journey.

We have said on numerous occasions in this column that what Tasmania needs from the AFL is a checklist of what is required by them for us to have a team. Yesterday, Mr McLachlan essentially laid that out. He said we need to fix the “fractured ... fragmented” nature of footy in this state, to all unite as a state — rather than North, South and North-West — behind a single Tasmanian football franchise. And if we show AFL House we can do that, he said, we will be “in a position to bid for a licence”. Thank you Mr McLachlan. We will be sure to hold you to that commitment.

And so now the hard work is up to us. This AFL licence we all dream of is not going to be handed to us on a platter. At least that’s now clear. In fact, Mr McLachlan made it super-clear yesterday that the Greater Western Sydney and Gold Coast experiments had been commercial decisions by the AFL to try to gain a foothold in potentially lucrative markets. Any Tassie team would be a different proposition, he said. Fair enough. That doesn’t mean we have to agree, but at least Mr McLachlan was honest about it when he spoke during his fleeting visit to Hobart yesterday.

We could say they should have done more, or we could take advantage of this moment to show how much we care.

So what do we need to do? We need to come together as a state to work towards this common goal. We need to put aside the discussions about where this dream AFL team of ours might be based, where it might play, and who the commercial backers might be. Those are all conversations for down the track. For now, what is important is that we focus on properly developing our VFL proposition. As a direct result of this process, we have been granted a provisional licence in the VFL — essentially the AFL reserves competition — from 2021. Mr McLachlan said the licence was provisional because “it needs unity, it needs to be sustainable, and there needs to be the talent there to support it”. OK, so there’s our key challenge: to stop dreaming and start doing.

Premier Will Hodgman should today stand up and announce the establishment of a government-backed working group to start developing our VFL proposition. He should direct the Treasurer to find some cash — perhaps from a government business enterprise such as Hydro — to underwrite the team. And Mr Hodgman should call the Prime Minister, remind him there is a critical by-election here in just over three weeks, and suggest it might be a good opportunity invest some federal money in high-performance training facilities for our elite footballers.

The AFL has finally opened the door, and there are two ways we can respond. We could either whinge and say they should have done more, or we can take advantage of this moment to show how much we care.