AFL push may need a fresh approach

AFL Cairns and the Gold Coast Suns, who use north Queensland as their recruiting zone, are in constant dialogue about the potential opportunities to bring AFL content, including games, back to the Far North from 2020 onwards.

A stumbling block for the Suns to bring a home game to Cairns will be that Tourism and Events Queensland are unlikely to fund moving a game within Queensland, where they were previously funding to move games from Victoria to Queensland.

“We are now working hard towards 2020,” Young said.

“We are looking at different ideas, with different ways to approach getting a game in Cairns. The state government are the principle partners in this and we need to work with them to find a way to make this work into the future.

“We need to do things a little different to get a better result than what we have over the last eight years.”

AFL Cairns are also open to hosting coaches conferences, under-age and international AFL carnivals as well as having North Queensland branding on the Suns jumpers.

Young is hopeful Cairns will be able to secure a NEAFL (the second tier Football League in New South Wales, Queensland, Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory) game in 2019.

The Suns are committed to growing their footprint in northern Queensland, which includes in development academies in the region, as well as pushing for premiership games.

“We have had discussions in relation to continuing to play in Cairns in the future and there are commercial realities around this,” a Suns spokesman said.