AFL

They play there in a few weeks time.

Still the current fixture leads to some confusion and is still unfair on interstate teams who don’t have the same luxury of playing ‘marquee’ games at the MCG.

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Essendon and Geelong have a country festival with entertainment and probably free tickets given to country footy clubs. It’s inter league weekend so most local clubs have a bye and one interleague match is played at the MCG

Why Can’t St. Kilda play Two Home Games a Year in Lavington?

Probably because interstate teams will be forced to play against them there.

Saints v GWS or Sydney would work well

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As former Geelong great Jimmy Bartel said on the radio “it all comes down to population and commercial”.

Western Sydney particularly where the much bigger population is and advertisers want to spend, even if it is based on reach.

But yes, I’ll always be for Tassie getting a team, needs to happen sooner rather than later, but how, well who knows!

North Melbourne (who have a long time time arrangement with Tasmania Government and AFL, like Hawthorn) was being very careful in his responses to Tim Lane and almost avoiding many of them, when asked about increasing the amount of games they play in Tassie, as well as whether they’d consider (or be forced to) merge and form a Tassie team - with a fact mentioned about Tassie’s population being equal to or bigger than North Melbourne’s supporter base (the president said it’d be equal, but I laughed my head off, get real).

Essendon’s been contracted to play seven home games at Docklands and four at the MCG since 2000. They requested less at Docklands thus season but AFL kept it as is. Essendon also have the second or third highest proportion of MCC members so a decent turnout us usually assured at the G.

Have St Kilda ever expressed a desire to play there? Melbourne, Hawthorn, North Melbourne and the Bulldogs all receive state or local government fuunding to play away from their home grounds.

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North Melbourne could guarantee finals representation every year if they put themselves in Tassie. They have an unbelievable record and the ground is really hard to play on if you don’t understand how to play there.

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Yet again, another perfectly fine day for watching football in Hobart but only 7194 people turned up. Three weeks ago, the attendance at UTAS Stadium was double that.
Hobart keeps claiming that they deserve to have all the teams all the time but when it comes to the crunch, they never turn up.
If a team is set up in Tassie and is set up in Hobart as their base, it will fail.

EDIT: Crowd figure updated as I unintentionally missed two people. Still doesn’t really improve it much but updating for factual correctness.

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I’ve heard that crowds in Hobart usually favour the away team, ie, not North Melbourne. They’re crowds in Melbourne aren’t much better. GWS would be a poor choice of opponent. If played in Melbourne they might have got 15,000.

GWS aren’t that bad this year and even still. If they bitch and moan for years and years about how the AFL is only played at Launnie and then not support it then it deserves to be looked at. Yes, they are the capital city but they don’t support it when it’s there or don’t have the population base close enough to be able to support it and need to rely on it being in a more centralised location.

Do neutrals go to Hawthorn matches at Launceston?

I don’t think there’s as many coming from Hobart as there used to be but certainly there are people from as far as Smithton (3 hours from Launnie, 5 from Hobart) who will travel to Launnie but baulk at going to Hobart. Certainly plenty from Devonport and Burnie who go there and several from Hobart too but I do think those ones have dropped off since North came to Bellerive.

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Perfectly fine day? Based on what exactly? I was there, far from perfect footy weather.
FYI, your crowd figure is wrong.
If a team is set up in Launceston, it will fail.

No rain and temps in the mid-teens, not great but certainly not as bad as what has been experienced or for the Adelaide game yesterday.
Just using the official crowd figure from the AFL site.

A Tasmanian team cannot simply be based in Hobart and relying on Hobart people to turn up as has been suggested in the past when people talk about a Tassie team.

AFL site reported 7,194. Are you having a crack because @ando9185 was 2 out or is that number also incorrect?

And the Crows regularly pull 50k. Crowds in Tassie are on the slide, have been for years. North’s major problem, in my opinion, is the price points put on tickets. Way too high. Can get a 4 game Hawks membership for less than you can get a 3 game North one.
Crowd was 7194, merely stating it wasn’t right.
The wind ensured the weather didn’t feel like mid teens at all.
Any Tassie side wouldn’t be a success without huge bankrolling from the AFL. And would always need to be a home game split between Hobart and Launceston. Would be as financially a basket case as 6 other sides currently are.

Nope, not “having a crack”. Merely stating it was incorrect. 7194 was the crowd figure announced at the game.

Apologies for missing you and one other person from my figure. I mistyped the figure.

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