Tim Lane - Time for a Tasmanian Team

[fishmonger]

The AFL can keep their 5,000 strong Carrara crowds ....

sign the petition and help give Tasmania its own AFL team
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/tasmania-needs-its-own-afl-team.html

It's time to unleash sports-mad Tasmanians on AFL
Tim Lane
March 6, 2007

PARDON the touch of Tasmanian triumphalism, but this is an opportunity that can't be allowed to pass. The weekend just gone was an unusually good one for the island state. It should cause football administrators, in particular, to sit up and take notice.

Not only did Tassie secure a berth in the final of this season's national cricket competition, but it produced the best crowd for any of the AFL pre-season matches played in three cities around the nation.

With the Western Bulldogs and the Kangaroos either on the rise or fighting for life, a total of only 22,000 attended their two games at Telstra Dome. When the Kangaroos played a strategically fixtured match against Collingwood at Carrara the week before, the crowd was just over 11,000. Fifteen and a half thousand went to Launceston's Aurora Stadium to see the Hawks play the Blues.

Significantly, more of them supported Carlton than Hawthorn. The Hawks, who are trying to identify themselves as the team of Tasmania, "owning" the state, as a couple of their administrators have crassly put it, were roundly booed before the game. Tasmanians have their own AFL teams. Only one team can ever unify the state's football fans, and that's one that genuinely represents them.

Such a team would be supported with frightening passion, for Tasmanians are quite mad about sport. When the state won its first domestic one-day cricket title in 1979, before a frenzied crowd in Hobart, John Inverarity, the losing captain, said at the presentation that he had played cricket all over the world but never in front of "a crowd like you".

Yet, while administrators fall over themselves trying to set up a team on the Gold Coast, where the loyalty of the half-million population is divided between rugby league, rugby union, soccer and the Brisbane Lions, Tasmanian football languishes. It was once like that in cricket, too. Now its cricket team, largely composed of home-grown talent, heads the field.

Look at the contribution Tasmania brings to Australian cricket: the world's best batsman and captain in Ricky Ponting, a recent vice-captain in David Boon, it currently provides two of the four-man national selection panel, and the national fast bowling coach, Troy Cooley. And it sits on top of the Pura Cup table.

In football, though, it continues not to be on the AFL's radar. Those in control are dazzled by the prospect of gold. They have stars and dollar signs in their eyes as they think about the Gold Coast and the western suburbs of Sydney. But there's no guarantee it won't be fools' gold. In southern Queensland, the Kangaroos will struggle to woo 30 per cent of the sports-interested population.

Were they to consider Tasmania, they would see the potential for 100 per cent support from sports fans. Not only that, they would be a short, cheap plane ride from Melbourne and their traditional supporters could stay in touch by enjoying a couple of trips a year to one of the world's most beautiful places. They could be the Tassie Kangaroos, wearing green, primrose and magenta at home, and blue and white when they played in Melbourne. They would have a support base across two states that would make them the envy of many other clubs.

And the AFL would have its truly national competition at last.

 

[nick_savo]

I say no more teams, The league works well like it is now

 

[JerryWexler]

Why doesn't Tim get his beloved & broke Blues down there? Maybe take his drag queen daughter down too so we don't have to look at her anymore.

 

[nick_savo]

Yeh, If they really want a Tasmanian team relocate Carlton or the Kangaroos

 

[chickens_law]

Tim Lane knows **** about footy. biggest noob ever.

 

[RememberMe]

I don't think we will ever get a team. The AFL will watch football die a slow and painful death in Tasmania.

 

[Ron]

Someone should tell him about the team Tassie already has.
The great Tassie Hawks.

 

[Warwick]

I didn't realise the domestic cricket competition was being factored into consideration. If that was the case, Queensland would have 5 teams in the AFL by now due to the Bulls.

 

[jacko57]

Tim Lane................Tassie tool, tosser, twat, twerp........can I say '****' ?

 

[The Majestic]

It's a nice thought but I can never see it happening, it's just a dream that should be left alone.

 

[gandaal]

A league team could probably work down there but an AFL Club needs plenty of money to sustain itself and the money just isn't there. The best they'll ever get is the deal they have with Hawthorn.

 

[Coyote]

Why doesn't Tim get his beloved & broke Blues down there? Maybe take his drag queen daughter down too so we don't have to look at her anymore.

Classic!!

 

[pazza]

Well if Peter Hudson's comments to Lane on Saturday night are any guide at all, it should happen. The Tasmanian Government has to be appluaded for the contribution they are making to this.

 

[Smell The Glove]

It would be nice, but wont happen. Give it up TL.

 

[PHX]

Sounds great! Not so good in realities but neither is the Gold Coast.

 

[Astro_]

Tassie is a pro-AFL state. They def. should be the next location for a team.

Lets be honest....the Gold Coast wont work...they ground holds 15,000. North pull a bigger crowd down here.

Plus corporate sponsorship will be a lot easier to get in tassie given their is no pressure from other codes down there.

 

[Bestbird]

It would be great if there were 2 less teams in Melbourne replaced by teams in the Gold Coast and Tasmania as it would make the competition truly national.

They might need propping up by the AFL for a while, but then again that has been the status quo for a couple of Melbourne based teams for too long anyway.

Mind you, as a WCE supporter. I'm happy with the current arrangement of the powerfull interstate teams dominating the Melbourne clubs struggling in the over saturated victorian market financially and thus performance wise.

 

[MightyFighting]

People, the poulation of Launceston is just 103,000. To put that into perspective, it's 1/11th the size of Adelaide.


Not. Gonna. Happen.

 

[RememberMe]

This has already been discussed in other threads.

 

[Hap Hapablap]

seriously who takes tim lane seriously. the guys a ****en joke. end of thread.

 

[The Majestic]

Tassie is a pro-AFL state. They def. should be the next location for a team.

Lets be honest....the Gold Coast wont work...they ground holds 15,000. North pull a bigger crowd down here.

Plus corporate sponsorship will be a lot easier to get in tassie given their is no pressure from other codes down there.

In about 2004 or so Scott Wade tried to get the AFL to allow a team to play at Bellerive Oval, apparently Melbourne, Richmond and Western Bulldogs were interested (according to Southern Cross news of that year) but the ground was ruled out.

I am not sure if an AFL team would "unite" Tasmania, the Devils sure didn't there was an article by former Burnie Docker Kent Jackson about the lack of Northerners playing for the Devils a couple of years back, and then there was a few arguments of the playing of Devils games and deciding a home ground for them.

As great as the North/South fued has been in regards to sporting compeition I'd hope one day the South and North agree on something to help save football in Tasmania and maybe then, and only then would we be able to have a chance.

York Park seems the likely venue at this point for an AFL side if we were to get one, maybe there could be a compremise somewhere and a stadium can be built in the South to entice some AFL games in the South, as well.

 

[Coin_Toss]

Tasmania is the second footy-mad state (that I'm aware of) behind Victoria. They deserve greater AFL coverage down there and the locals would turn up in numbers to watch the AFL. Just like they did on the weekend. If Hawthorn can establish some sort of home base it will be a step in the right direction for Tasmania.

 

[pazza]

Like I said before..if Peter Hudson is trying top make this happen - IT WILL HAPPEN.

 

[finders]

Tassie would need to raise $30 million and have a membership of 40,000 from a population of only 600,000 - its simply not a viable business proposition.
The last thing the AFL Victorian teams need is to prop up another failed team.

 

[Father Jack]

People, the poulation of Launceston is just 103,000. To put that into perspective, it's 1/11th the size of Adelaide.


Not. Gonna. Happen.

Yeah, but Devonport, Burnie and Hobart aren't that far away. Carrara gets a bit more than 5k btw. The way its going with the Hawks is fine I reckon.