I love football, still do, and that’s why to every footy lover outside Tasmania I say – if the game dies in Tasmania, it can die anywhere.
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Here is the most significant moment of my 2022 football season.
I follow Longford in the Northern Tasmanian Football Association. Mid-season, I arrived at the Longford ground at 1.30pm on a Saturday to find the senior match nearly over. When I asked why, I was told, “Because it’s the under-18 round”.
Clubs in Tasmania are struggling for numbers.CREDIT: SEBASTIAN COSTANZO
At the end of the senior match, the players from the two senior sides lined up to clap the under-18 teams on to the ground. The crowd roared, cars tooted, the young men leapt like salmons. The crowd stayed and gave the under-18 match their full support. Why? Because, in Tasmania, a growing number of young men and women are indifferent to the game.
Former Hawthorn player Peter Schwab told me that once, when legendary coach Allan “Yabby” Jeans was delivering a pre-match pep talk, the odd thought occurred to him that, “this only matters because we agree it does”. In Tasmania, a significant number of young people – plus any number of affluent refugees from other states – no longer think that footy matters.
About five years ago, the then president of Glenorchy Football Club, John McCann, said the ecology of Tasmanian football was sick. The ecology of Tasmanian football is now beginning to collapse with clubs around the island struggling for numbers.
Ex-Hawk Peter Hudson.CREDIT:THE AGE
Earlier this month, Glenorchy, one of the powerhouses of Tasmanian football in the post-war period, let it be known that
it will struggle to field a men’s team this season. A list of players who have come to the VFL/AFL via Glenorchy Football Club would include Darryl Sutton, Rodney Eade, Adrian Fletcher, Andy Lovell, Ben Brown, Jimmy Webster, Daryn Cresswell, Brodie Holland and Matthew Mansfield.
Another big name to play with Glenorchy was
Peter Hudson, one of six geniuses of Australian football to emerge from Tasmania during the 1960s (the other five being Darrell Baldock, Ian Stewart, Royce Hart, Brent Crosswell and Johnny Greening). At Hawthorn, over 129 games, Hudson averaged 5.6 goals a match, the highest average in VFL/AFL history.
Hudson started with the Upper Derwent Football Club, which no longer exists. He then played with New Norfolk, which is struggling for numbers. When he returned to Tasmania from Hawthorn, he joined Glenorchy, which is now also struggling for numbers. The game is no longer played in government schools. Hudson was a government high school kid. Exactly where does the AFL expect the next Peter Hudson to intersect with the sport except on screens along with other e-games?
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The AFL has a Brexit-like arrogance, the sort that promises grand visions and, within a couple of years, delivers empty supermarkets. Historically, Tasmanian football was valued by the AFL only in so far as it supplied recruits for AFL clubs and provided a guaranteed television audience. The AFL has now promised to spend $30 million on talent academies
if the stadium goes ahead. Offering conditional aid in times of crisis is Trumpian.
Nature abhors a vacuum and the vacuum in Tasmanian folk/sporting culture is being filled by NBL club the Jackjumpers. An ABC story three weeks ago revealed that interest in basketball in Tasmania has “skyrocketed”. Basketball Tasmania says it needs 26 new indoor basketball courts around the state. Meanwhile, in the southern third of the island (including the Greater Hobart area), there are only 20 football clubs left.
Tasmania having a team in the AFL was always a just cause. The critical moment in recent history was when Robert Shaw’s Tasmanian team defeated Victoria in a 1996 state of origin match in Hobart. There was no question that Tasmania could then field a competitive AFL team. Instead, Tasmanian football declined.
Then about five years ago everything changed. There was a concerted movement from the grassroots for Tasmania to get an AFL licence. It had broad support and articulate leadership. It was like hearing an old song, a merry dance tune. Tassie footy was alive and on the move ... and who came along but the AFL making the stadium a condition of Tasmania getting a licence. As the stadium became a mind-numbing and unnecessary distraction, the enthusiasm for a Tasmanian team among Tasmanians has waned.
In the north of the island where I live and where the culture of the game is strongest, I have met one person in favour of the stadium. People are opposed to the stadium because they believe the money could be better spent on the ailing public health system. It has also been noted that Lachlan Murdoch, co-winner of the AFL broadcasting rights, owns the Hobart
Mercury which – surprise, surprise – is stridently pro-stadium.
The best argument for the stadium was advanced by Matthew “Richo” Richardson. As a footballer, he was a performer who put it all out there for the crowd to see. Growing up, he loved the Tassie footy scene but, in his heart, he wanted to play on the MCG. If he were a kid again, he believes he’d want to play on the Hobart stadium because, in his view, it’s a grander stage. He also points out that if the Brisbane Lions have had player retention issues, a team based in Launceston can surely expect them.
But the stadium is not the critical issue facing Tasmanian football. The history of popular games is like the history of popular music. There are tracts of America where blues and jazz began and flourished where that music is now hardly heard. Footy was my jazz. I loved it, still do, and that’s why to every footy lover outside Tasmania I say – if the game dies in Tasmania, it can die anywhere. To Richard Goyder and the AFL Commission, I say: you only had one job – to protect and nurture the game. Where have you been?
