AFL Tasmania plotting Giant comeback

CIRCULAR Head will meet with AFL Tasmania next week to plot a course back into the NWFL next season after the Giants were forced into recess for a lack of players.

The Giants trained at their Smithton base on Tuesday night then held a crisis meeting to discuss the club’s future given its chronic lack of players for its four teams — seniors, reserves, under-18s and women’s seniors.

The club could not find an answer and was forced to withdraw from the NWFL in its 100th-anniversary season.

AFL Tasmania’s community football manager Andrew Dykes hopes the Giants will be back next year.

“We will meet to talk about the way forward,” Dykes said.

“They’ve got a player shortage at the moment but we will discuss what options are available to get their club and teams back on the park and playing football in 2020.”

Dykes said there was “no simple solution”.

“There are a lot of football clubs on the North-West Coast and they all need players to make their teams viable,” he said. “How players find their clubs will be part of the discussion and in terms of population supporting the number of teams that are on the NorthWest Coast, that’s a bigger discussion that has to be had in the very near future.”

The three regional hubs designed to support local football are still weeks away from starting.

“The hubs will provide competition and administration support for the various leagues and take some of the workload off some volunteers, who work very hard to keep their clubs and leagues sustainable,” Dykes said.

“Through the regional hubs we have a great opportunity to make an impact going forward and help them be sustainable all around Tasmania, which is our key focus.”

Dykes said the hubs were close. “We are at the last stages of negotiating the affiliation agreements and once they are signed off between us and the various leagues and associations around the state then we will move to getting the hubs up and running in each region,” he said.

“We are working on having them operational by the start of the football season, which is only six weeks away, but there’s still a bit of work to be done to make that happen.”