Last week in Tasmania Opposition Leader Bryan Green gave Labor’s budget reply, and in it said the party would establish a roundtable to pursue a Tasmanian AFL team and develop an academy for football players.

An academy would be great idea, in the style of Queensland or NSW’s academies but open to all teams within the AFL.

This would give Tasmanian players more chance to succeed at football’s top level.

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However there are three reasons why a team in Tassie would not work.

1. Fickle fans

Tasmanians can be very fickle when it comes to sport. Two examples of this are Tasmanian Devils Football Club (TDFC) and Hobart Devils basketball team. Both started of with large crowds before the novelty wore off, crowd numbers dropped and the teams folded.

TDFC’s average attendance was around 4000 in the early days of the team’s time within VFL. By the end of 2008, the average crowd was 1500 to 1000 per game – a drop of around 85 per cent.

2. Population

Melbourne has a population of around 4.25 million, Victoria as a whole has around 5.86 million, yet even with Victoria’s population, AFL teams have trouble surviving.

Tasmania has 514,978 people.

I know that Geelong only has a population of around 221,515, but they have members and supporters scattered throughout Victoria.



3. Supporters of other teams

What about those in Tasmania who already support other teams? Some Tasmanians would become members of the Tasmania team to start with, but keep the membership of their original team.

Some friends that live in western Sydney got Greater Western Sydney memberships but after a while some went back to supporting their original team.

There is, however, one way a team in Tasmania would work

1. Move a team from Melbourne

What are the chances of that happening? About as likely as Australia being awarded the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

It would be great to see a team running around in green and yellow, with a Tassie devil or tiger logo, but isn’t on the cards in the near future.