Moved Thread If Tasmania gets the 19th license, what state or territory would you like to see team 20 based in?

[Adelaide Hawk]

I don't know where the AFL thinks they are going to find another 80 players. There's enough bums in the AFL now with 18 teams.

 

[Gigantor]

I don't know where the AFL thinks they are going to find another 80 players. There's enough bums in the AFL now with 18 teams.

It's a reasonable question, add to that the retention problems a Tassie club is likely to encounter.
The answer probably lies in these academies which are barely 10 years old, a growing population, and attracting segments of the population that once upon a time will not have been interested in Australian Football.

 

[Walshawk]

The nightmare situation in Alice Springs is probably helping the case for a NT team. If it’s going to be based around federal funding as a community initiative it has potential. This and the Tassie team should be the AFL giving back to heartlands that have provided them with lots of talent, particularly Aboriginal Australia via the NT. Talent wise, it has massive potential to bring new players into the elite comp as there are lots of indigenous players who don’t want to move down to Melbourne who would be much more likely to play in a team based out of Darwin. There’s also a type of personality that would be attracted to life up in the tropics. It’s an astonishingly beautiful place.

They are not adequate reasons to have an AFL club in the NT.

There are eight NT players on AFL lists. Even is you increase by 50% that is only 12. Not worth putting a team in a very small, isolated city with a climate not well suited to footy to produce a handful more players. The NT population is just too small. Most indigenous AFL players come from WA and SA.