The question is not whether the introduction of a Tasmanian team to the AFL could have been handled better, but whether it could possibly have been handled worse.

The two people I feel sorry for right now are Brendon Gale, the CEO of the newly formed Tasmania Football Club, and Grant O’Brien, its chairman. Both emerged from the Penguin Football Club, a great little Tasmanian footy club that battled the odds and won occasional premierships because it was a formidably tight unit. I believe Brendon and Grant love Tassie footy, as do I.

An artist’s depictions of the proposed Macquarie Point Stadium.

The paradox at the heart of Australian football is that it’s a great game by world standards played by a tiny percentage of the world’s population. It’s also a 19th-century game. The art of keeping it alive in the 21st century is a measure of its leaders. Right now, in Tasmania, the organisation demonstrating this art with zest and conviction is the NBL 2023-24 premiers, the JackJumpers. Head coach Scott Roth crisscrosses the state meeting locals and talking about his game. People are impressed. I hear his stories being retold.

You could write a footy TV drama, a black comedy, and title it The Stadium. It would tell the story of a proud little footy state that battles away for well over a century – and, for a period in the 1960s, produces the best and most exciting talent in the country – and then finally gets its chance to play in the big time BUT … a condition is attached. A condition never attached before. The Stadium.

Tassie will build, and basically pay for, a new stadium. Along with nearly all the AFL’s brainstorms, the idea comes from America. It’s a way of divorcing investors from the........

© Brisbane Times