At least they could start a fan site called "Van Diemensland"!

Martin Flanigan is in white hot form today. On top of his wonderful piece on Nathan Jones, he argues that the AFL is treating Tasmania like a colony - Tasmanian football landscape not as simple as it may seem

Can martin flanigan just run the afl please

Can martin flanigan just run the afl please

if you want muddy suburban grounds with mostly standing room then yeah sure...

.... sure

If the AFL wasn't a business, then Tasmania would already have a side.

It is probably too late now, but rewind time, keep the game pure and give Tasmania a side

That would've been best for football.

But the AFL went in another direction, they sold the game down the drain.

Now the argument that Tasmania should have a side, really isn't even an argument.

Because under the current AFL business model structure, the market isn't large enough for Tasmania.

Yet the AFL are happy to send 2 sides down to thieve money off the natives, I guess at least Hawthorn put in time down there.

What do North do exactly? They knocked back the Gold Coast, they weren't welcome in Ballarat, so now the AFL gives them games in Tasmania.

No wonder people are flocking to other sports.

And North are like leprosy in Canberra They should be the wombats not the kangaroos!

The typecasting of a move or more appropriately a "push" into Tasmania as an "equalisation measure" is typical of the AFL's duplicity and deviousness these days. Last year, the AFL sent such luminaries as Eddie McGuire and Andrew Newbold on a junket to the USA with Andrew Demetriou ostensibly to study ways of equalising the competition. Since their return, they've done nothing but resist any meaningful ways to equalise the competition starting with their public opposition towards Melbourne's application for draft assistance. In January, Newbold warned the AFL and its clubs not to rush into any panicked decisions over the issue of equalisation i.e signaling that the process would be slow (and probably meaningless). Yesterday, McGuire had this to say about the potential Good Friday blockbuster fixture, "I don't think putting two smaller teams together is going to get the job done".

Get the picture? Having representatives of the stronger clubs involved in the process of equalisation is a complete waste of time. They will work harder to entrench their clubs among the "haves" than do anything to look after the "have nots". And because a powerful club like Hawthorn already has a stake in Tasmania via its lucrative "partnership" with the Tasmanian government that gives it four home games in Launceston, we are not going to see an AFL club transplanted into Tasmania any time soon.