I’LL PAY THE BILL

You want your own AFL team?

BILL Shorten has pledged $25 million of federal funds to a future Tassie AFL team, saying it means money can no longer be used as an excuse for the AFL not granting us a licence.

The federal Opposition Leader will today make the pledge — and he challenged the Prime Minister to match it — saying “it is about time political parties got behind the Australian game ... [that] is scrambling in one of its key foundation states”.

The funding would be used for better facilities, upgrading grounds and player development.

“We are sending a message to the AFL: money is not going to be the reason it doesn’t happen,” he said.

TASMANIA’S push for an AFL team has gone to a new level with a Bill Shorten-elected Labor government committing $25 million to a licence.

The Mercury can reveal Mr Shorten will today make the pledge, which is contingent on the AFL granting a licence for a men’s and women’s team.

It means should the AFL finally grant the state a licence, Tasmania will have $25 million in the kitty to start with.

Mr Shorten said it sends a strong message to the AFL and called on the Liberal Government to back his pledge.

“It is about time Australian political parties got behind the Australian game, it is Australia’s great athletic convention but it is scrambling in one of its key foundation states,” he said.

“We are sending a message to the AFL money is not going to be the reason it doesn’t happen.

“Ultimately the decision of AFL club licences is rightly the decision for the AFL, but I’d like to build up local football so it is a genuine feeder system for an AFL club, not just a league that is harvested by the mainland clubs.”

The funding will be used to get the team up and running and will be used for better fa- cilities, upgrading grounds and player development.

Mr Shorten has also promised $1 million to Tasmania’s VFL and TAC Cup teams that were announced by AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan in Hobart on Tuesday. Mr Shorten on Thursday promised an additional $5 million to a Save Tassie Football fund for grassroots clubs and leagues.

He said he had been speaking regularly with Tasmanians who had raised concerns over the state of the game.

The Mercury revealed on Tuesday male participation had slumped 14.7 per cent from 2006 to 2017, including a fall of 22 per cent in the 13-to-18year-old age group.

“Because I used to be a union rep organising in northern Tassie, I talk to a lot of blokes who play footy in the various comps and they like the idea of a Tasmanian [AFL] team but they also know we’ve got to help build the ecosystem of footy in Tassie,” he said.

“Sometimes you wonder whether the mainlanders are as interested in this question as Tasmania but Tasmania has given a lot to the game, from ‘Doc’ [Darrel] Baldock, Peter Hudson through to ‘Richo’ [Matthew Richardson], Alastair Lynch, Jack Riewoldt.

“You couldn’t imagine an Australian rules national competition without a contribution from Tasmania could you?”

MONEY is the bottom line in Tasmania’s quest for its own AFL team.

The big league’s finances are underpinned by television broadcasting rights that are driven, in turn, by the size of the potential viewing market that TV coverage can provide advertisers.

Tasmania’s small population is far less appealing than the potential for growth in viewing markets in western Sydney and the Gold Coast.

The AFL is pouring tens of millions each year into the Gold Coast Suns and GWS like a miner chasing the mother lode — and each year, particularly in the case of the Suns, that fortune is written off.

As it drills ever deeper in search of the golden vein, it is tunnelling straight past its core business, its reason for being, its bread and butter.

Tasmania is a smaller, less lucrative but more reliable, realistic source of future revenue for the AFL.

Many businesses have made this same mistake, but the error of their ways is not obvious until the rivers of gold, in this case the TV rights, taper off to expose the sink holes in the balance sheet.

Once things start collapsing it can trigger a confidence crisis across the business, and an external perception of failure, and that’s when it can get very nasty.

If TV revenue keeps growing, any problems will remain masked.

But whether it will keep growing is far from clear in a volatile media landscape that is being turned inside out by social media, new technology, changing investment and revenue models and an unpredictable investment climate.

More circumspect business brains might, in such unstable times, advise on a more balanced business plan that continues to invest in the mother lode quest but focuses more intensely on its core business. It’s about spreading and minimising the risk to the company as a whole.

The plan to build two clubs, the Suns and the Giants, from scratch in two non-Aussie Rules regions at virtually the same time was from the outset highly speculative. It was sold to the public as visionary, but can be just as easily characterised as a gambler settling in for a long night at the pokies.

The Giants model appears more successful on the field, but neither club has established any substantial grassroots support.

The Suns cannot win, attract miserable attendances and have lost, and are losing, their best players. They lurch from drug scandals to public relations disasters. Last year they lost legend Gary Ablett and star Adam Saad to Melbourne, with Tom Lynch set to leave unless the AFL forks out.

The Gold Coast experiment is a failure on all levels.

Tasmanian football also has issues. Parochialism and lack of unity is cited by the AFL as an argument against a Tasmanian team in the big league, but paradoxically a Tassie club is the panacea to that division.

Having for years reported on games everywhere from the amateurs to the NTFA, NWFU and TFL, I know Aussie Rules is part of Tasmanian culture.

With good backing, substantially less than that required for the Giants and Suns, a Tasmanian club could be an AFL powerhouse and win premierships, with a brand, fans and sponsors to rival any club.

Beyond the bottom line there is another unspoken obstacle to a Tasmanian club: blind Melbourne prejudice.

The AFL is national in name alone. Every decision it makes is from the Melbourne perspective.

Ask the management of the Adelaide Crows, West Coast Eagles or Sydney Swans. They will regale you with stories about Melbourne-centricity.

But like all prejudices, those who hold them are blind to them. I’m not a racist, but …

That’s why the AFL fails to see a problem with Collingwood president Eddie McGuire or North Melbourne’s James Brayshaw hosting national TV shows or calling games.

That’s why the AFL fails to see an issue with Hawthorn coach Alistair Clarkson’s strategic coffees with its chief executive Gillon McLachlan.

That’s why the AFL argues that for reasons of tradition the grand final must be played on the MCG, failing to comprehend that it’s not part of the tradition of clubs such as Fremantle or the Crows.

That’s why the AFL says Carlton has won 16 premierships and Port Adelaide just one, but the Blues have only won one while under the AFL moniker and Port has won 36 in the SANFL.

It’s all so cosy. Melburnians can’t see it but, for those on the receiving end, the prejudice is bleedingly obvious.

In Melbourne, there is a stereotype of Little Tassie, the simpleton younger brother who’s good for a laugh. They love ruffling Little Tassie’s ginger hair while teasing him.

They cannot see that Little Tassie has grown up and now stands 198cm, weighs 98kg, has hands the size of dinner plates, moves like a midfielder and is known to mates as Big Taz.

I reckon they’re scared of him.