Up until the end of 1985, Tassie had three major competitions running in the South, North and North-West of the state. In 1985, there were 23 senior sides all claiming a "tier 1" status, before that title actually existed. The South was the comp recognised almost from the start as the dominant one administratively, and was usually the strongest as well. As a result of falling standards of footy, nationalisation being the in-thing and a good dose of footy politics, a proper state comp involving reps from all three bodies was introduced. In reality, it was more of a Southern acquisition of Northern footy, but in any case they managed to get northern teams onto the park in time for 1986 and keep the thing going for 15 years. In 2000, it all fell to bits, and the hastily constructed Tasmanian Devils fulfilled the high end footy niche in the state by playing in the VFL for 8 seasons. That all died as well in 2008, and the state league was reintroduced in 2009. Lots of dramas and subplots and baffling administrative decisions throughout the entire journey, all underscored by the crushing weight of national footy and its interests and interference, but on the other hand there were some great footy games and teams, and some of us enjoyed the apparent state unity, even if it was mostly a front!
Here are the scores of every match played in official statewide comps from 1986. There were a couple of other combined leagues beforehand - the Winfield Cup in 1980, and the Greater Northern League in 1981-82 - but the first was only a two month divisional knockout, and the other only involved the two northern leagues. There were also state premierships going all the way back to the turn of the century, which were simply winners of comps challenging each other.
A big thumbs up and thank you to Kingpin and Ozguy. KP was the initial inspiration, uploading all of the scores onto Wiki and the Australian Football site over the years, and I used his stuff as a template. There are many inconsistencies between his scores and my own notebook, which I started in 1986, and I'd bet 95% of them revolve around the attention spans and professionalism of the Mercury and Examiner reporters covering the matches! There have been a few changes from KP's wiki entries, and these typically resulted when I'd feed the scores into the Excel program I made up to work out ladders - I'm assuming KP copied the ladders and scores straight from the Mercury, and their mistakes became the errors in his entries because often our identical ladders would highlight where a score was mistaken. His work also corrected mine a few times, and there are also many unresolved issues! Ozguy helped immensely with new era goalkickers and player names, correcting my stuff which was drawn from not-always-reliable Sportingpulse.
Here are the scores of every match played in official statewide comps from 1986. There were a couple of other combined leagues beforehand - the Winfield Cup in 1980, and the Greater Northern League in 1981-82 - but the first was only a two month divisional knockout, and the other only involved the two northern leagues. There were also state premierships going all the way back to the turn of the century, which were simply winners of comps challenging each other.
A big thumbs up and thank you to Kingpin and Ozguy. KP was the initial inspiration, uploading all of the scores onto Wiki and the Australian Football site over the years, and I used his stuff as a template. There are many inconsistencies between his scores and my own notebook, which I started in 1986, and I'd bet 95% of them revolve around the attention spans and professionalism of the Mercury and Examiner reporters covering the matches! There have been a few changes from KP's wiki entries, and these typically resulted when I'd feed the scores into the Excel program I made up to work out ladders - I'm assuming KP copied the ladders and scores straight from the Mercury, and their mistakes became the errors in his entries because often our identical ladders would highlight where a score was mistaken. His work also corrected mine a few times, and there are also many unresolved issues! Ozguy helped immensely with new era goalkickers and player names, correcting my stuff which was drawn from not-always-reliable Sportingpulse.
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