Give us our game back Andrew
July 6th 2008 07:11
A collectible Mobil card showing Tasmanian football legend Ian Stewart receiving the Brownlow Medal in 1965. Stewart won the Brownlow again in 1966
Give us our game back.
Yes you, Andrew Demetriou, chief executive of the Australian Football League. The bloke determined to introduce the game to the western suburbs of Sydney, where they don't give a damn, and deny it to the people of Tasmania, who give a very big damn indeed.
The bloke who also wants to put a team on the Gold Coast, where they don't give a damn either, and deny one to the Top End, where they produce the most exciting footballers in the world.
Of course, Mr Empire-builder Demetriou can justify his decisions to ignore the faithful and preach to the unconverted. Professional sport is a competitive business and in a competitive business environment you have to grow to survive. The biggest revenue category in this business is television, and the people behind the television cheque books like to see big numbers and the big numbers aren't in Hobart and Darwin.
All of which sounds good in terms of boardroom debate, growth strategy and job tenure for Mr A Demetriou. But it's all garbage.
While AFL management is trying to put the joy of Australian football into the hearts of the rugby heathens in Sydney, it is snubbing the faithful in Tasmania, a bastion of the game which is being denied its birthright simply because western Sydney has greater potential.
Well, anything has potential from a zero base.
A crowd of 20,961 attended an AFL game in Launceston between Hawthorn and Richmond in 2006. How many more people would have gone if a local team had been playing? Meanwhile, in one of the biggest embarrassments in the history of professional sport, 6,354 people watched a game between North Melbourne and West Coast on the Gold Coast in 2008. Bit of work to do there, Andrew.
So how many would go to a game in western Sydney? I'll be generous and estimate 20. Including the umpires.
In an effort to deflect attention from its arrogant rejection of Tasmania for an AFL franchise, the AFL has for many years staged one or two games a year in Launceston. It first made St Kilda and then Hawthorn an ersatz Tasmanian. Here you go, Tassie, they said. Come and cheer and roar and support this, err, Melbourne team.
Yes, the games usually attract less than the 2006 record mentioned earlier. But it's not that they don't love their sport (15,891 attended a 2003 World Rugby Cup game at York Park between Romania and Namibia). It's that they love Tasmania.
The original Brisbane franchise was based at the Gold Coast and was a dismal flop until it moved to Brisbane. There could be a lesson for AFL management there. And it wasn't AFL management decision-making which eventually made the Sydney franchise known in the harbour city - it was Warwick Capper.
Tell you what, Andrew, let's stage one or two North Hobart footy club fixtures in Melbourne next year. You could do it on the same weekend that you send Hawthorn, whose supporters would really rather have them in Melbourne, to play in Launceston, where the supporters would really prefer to watch a Tasmanian team.
And a North Horbart game in Melbourne would get a bigger crowd than any AFL game in the western suburbs of Sydney.
They don't want our game. The local population have never heard of the AFL's expansion plans because the local media have never reported those plans because nobody in western Sydney gives a damn about such plans. Expansion there is just taking our game away from us.
Tasmanians want an AFL team. A VFL team is just another insult. Look into the eyes of Tasmanians, Andrew, as I have have, and see the depth of their desire to be represented in the national competition. To be treated like a fair dinkum football state.
Sometimes you have to listen to your heart. Footy doesn't belong to television moguls or business planners or boardroom heavyweights. Their claim to the game will never match that of the be-beanied barracker, badge-covered duffle coat over one arm, scarf-encased future footy star under the other, forking out a goodly percentage of the family's weekly spendables to go through the turnstile.
Footy belongs to the supporters. So build your empire where it's wanted, Andrew. Where it means something.
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