Each time Tasmania meets the criteria For an AFL team, the goalposts move

The reality is, Tasmania could have had an Australian Rules football team in the national competition years ago, but the AFL has posed roadblock after roadblock, writes Tony Harrison

FORMER premier Peter Gutwein promised AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan a roofed stadium on the Hobart waterfront should Tasmania be granted entry to the national football competition.

Of course, Gil embraced the idea, not necessarily because he wants to see a Tasmanian team playing against the like of Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon et al. More likely, he knows many of his clubs, for their own selfish reasons, are against the addition of a Tasmanian team and he sees the momentous challenge of building a new stadium as giving him yet another and probably insurmountable hurdle for the island state to overcome to join the AFL.

This pre-condition for a new stadium if we’re to get an AFL team, follows on from the earlier demand for 50,000 members and guaranteed government dollars to back the side on an ongoing basis, conditions that no other expansion teams, such as the Gold Coast Suns and Greater Western Sydney have had to meet. For those clubs it has been the reverse – subsidised to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by the AFL itself.

Each time Tasmania meets an AFL condition, the AFL moves the goal posts and makes yet another absurd demand. What will be next, even if the stadium was built?

While our hospitals, schools and communities are in desperate need of additional funding to manage our health and housing crisis, poor education standards, transport woes and other ills, can any government seriously contemplate spending $750m to $1bn building a swanky, roofed sporting stadium in Hobart?

Particularly when we have two perfectly good AFLapproved stadia, one in the south and one in the north, with both having already earned their own national and international reputations as well as boasting the best playing surfaces in the nation.

No here’s a thought: If stadium construction is seen as an economic generator, if the business case stacks up and presuming the government has, or has access to the capital, how about we spend $200m each at Blundstone Arena and UTAS Stadium and the remaining $350m to $600m on improving our health, housing, education, public transport and related social outcomes?

That would give the state two fantastic sporting stadia, resolve the political challenge of playing AFL football exclusively in the south and go

some way towards fixing Tasmania’s real and serious problems, especially in health, housing and education.

Just imagine the outcry from the north if the Tasmanian team played all its home games under the roof at the proposed Hobart stadium? The economists, accountants and marketers will tell us that a Tassie team’s best chance of financial success would rely on matches being played in both ends of the state.

What government would be brave enough to withstand that political barrage when there is a more realistic alternative that can equally benefit the north and the south?

But with $200m, neither stadium would have a roof and it is cold here in July, I hear some of you say. Well, no, neither would have a roof. But football is a winter sport, originating in Melbourne as a means of keeping cricketers fit in the colder months. And yes, it does rain in Tasmania, but for some perspective, Hobart has the second lowest annual rainfall of all but one of Australia’s capital cities –

Adelaide.

A roof over a football stadium is simply an unnecessary extravagance.

Parking is often claimed to be a problem at Bellerive, less so in Launceston. Some of the $200m could be used to support public transport and parking initiatives and still leave plenty for stadia development.

I estimate that both Blundstone Arena and UTAS Stadium have been developed to their current levels for considerably less than $200m each. Both venues have successfully hosted AFL football, national and international cricket and other major sports and entertainment.

Double that expenditure and we’ll have two great venues capable of providing twin homes for a Tasmanian AFL team.

That is, if the AFL and its clubs indeed want a Tasmanian team and if they want to establish a truly national competition. For the reality is, Tasmania could have been in the AFL years ago, if Gillon McLachlan and his predecessor, Andrew Demetriou had the courage to say yes. Instead, they posed roadblock after roadblock.

Tasmania has produced some greats of the Australian game – Peter Hudson, Darrel Baldock, Royce Hart, Ian Stewart, Matthew Richardson and Jack and Nick Riewoldt to name but a few, and today almost every AFL club has a player or two from Tasmania on its list.

Given entry into national competitions, Tasmania has proved it on the cricket field with both our male and female players not only competing with their interstate brothers and sisters, but succeeding, winning and representing Australia with distinction.

Perhaps that success from Tasmania is what the AFL and its clubs are afraid of?

Tony Harrison is a former chairman of Cricket Tasmania and a former director of Cricket Australia. He has been involved in the redevelopment of Bellerive Oval over the past 25 years and was a member of the team that negotiated to bring AFL matches to Bellerive.