TSL boss denies lack of dialogue
AFL Tasmania has defended its stance on discussing funding for the 2022 TSL season with clubs despite the uncertainty of the competition long term.
Several club coaches have expressed their frustrations surrounding the future of the State League and the impact it has on recruiting players moving forward.
While next year’s season is locked in, clubs remain in the dark around how much funding they will receive.
Southern Regional manager and TSL manager Andy Bennett said he has initiated contact with the seven presidents, and will talk with all individually before organising a group meeting to thrash out details for 2022.
Bennett also denied a lack of consultation between the clubs and AFL Tasmania.
“I sent an email out to all club presidents, and we’re arranging individual meetings for those club presidents at the moment and our aim is to knock that off in the week post the TSL grand final,” Bennett said.
“Then we’ll meet with all presidents together after that’s been completed. I’m happy to meet with each individual president any time they want to talk to me, and I have done.
“But under our agreement, we will meet three times and so this is our third, if you go by the letter of the law, we will meet that, now that works both ways.”
Bennett said he understood frustrations around funding for clubs who were no longer in the finals race and already turning an eye to next year.
However he declared there will be no decision made on any league in the state in iso
lation, pointing to the recent futures project forum, which gave stakeholders the chance to air concerns or suggestions for the code.
“We deeply believe that we make one decision to have an impact on the whole ecosystem, which is the language we use and it’s the right language to use,” Bennett said.
“We said we will not make any decisions in isolation, around TSL, SFL, NTFA, whatever competition is involved and we will stay true to that.
“The other thing we need to understand is that we are living in the Covid world. While we haven’t been materially impacted by that horrible disease at the moment, all of AFL is.
“Fingers were crossed at the start of the year that we wouldn’t be impacted in the way that we were in 2020, that’s across the nation, and things looked pretty good for a while. But things have turned pretty ordinary since then.
“The funding around all of AFL is up in the air. We can’t avoid the impact on our budgets as well, so we’ve got to take best guesses, and we need to know as much information as we can before we make really strong decisions.”