World Footy News

It appears that Tasmania is going full steam ahead with its bid to have a team in the Australian Football League. We've previously reported (Tasmania bid adds AFL expansion twist) that the island state has upped the ante to have their own team in the sport's elite competition, a dream the Apple Islanders have harboured since the VFL morphed into the AFL.

In favour of their case is the large number of great Tasmanian footballers who went on to play in the VFL over the decades, often making the move when players in the other two strongest states, SA and WA, chose to stay in their local leagues (although this is sometimes erroneously cited as evidence of Tasmania's relative strength whereas it simply reflected its proximity to Melbourne and the strength of the SA and WA leagues offering elite competition and retaining their players). Something else that would have encouraged Tasmanians to cross Bass Straight was that they also had an affinity for the tough, wet weather football played in the VFL, whereas the SANFL tended to be more of a running handball game and the WAFL even more so with big grounds and less wet weather. As an aside it's interesting to note that in the modern AFL poor grounds are a thing of the past and it could be argued that the game has become more like that once played in WA and SA, albeit with far superior fitness and skill in the professional era. Certainly the type of football played at the top level quickly homogenised with the emergence of a national league, with clubs eager to follow whatever is yielding success at the time.

Always against the Tassie cause has been the argument that the population is borderline adequate and split between the north and south of the island, and projections showed it shrinking, along with a struggling economy. Those latter factors are now less severe, and after several years with little serious push, the move to grant 17th and 18th licenses to Queensland and New South Wales has stoked the Tasmanians' coals. The state government has driven much of the push, businesses are being urged to get on board, a website proclaims their cause (Tassie Footy Team), there is talk of a Federal Government senate enquiry, and a full scale bid is underway led by seven prominent people including former AFL player Alistair Lynch, former Melbourne Demons CEO Steve Harris, Tasmania's Minister for Economic Development (Paula Wriedt) and ANZ chief economist Saul Eslake (see a press release here: Tasmania AFL Bid Steering Committee Announced).

Exactly what they are bidding for remains a mystery. The AFL appear fully committed to the Gold Coast and Western Sydney, as has been their long stated aim. Is Tasmania bidding to usurp either of those licenses (read more about the progress of the Gold Coast bid for 2011 in an interview on the AFL website with the GC17 bid chairman: Heavy Hitters: John Witheriff)? Or to position itself should a Melbourne-based club fold or merge?

Numerous polls have shown that the general public of Tasmania and Victoria support the islanders' bid. At the end of the day it is very difficult to argue that they do not at least deserve a go. It almost seems only fair that they be given an opportunity, and if they fail then at least they tried. The difficulty is what then happens if they can't compete monetarily - how does the AFL manage another financially weak club on top of a few strugglers in Melbourne and several others outside Victoria which do not have impressive bottom-lines?

But by all means give Tasmania a chance under similar terms to the Gold Coast and Western Sydney - the only question is, with 19 teams unlikely and huge investment and importance in the Queensland and NSW markets, who misses out?