Is Tasmanian AFL team a holy grail or poisoned chalice? Time will tell

Tasmania has an AFL team.

It's a sentence that only five years ago existed only in the realm of parody or satire.

But now it's real.

Of course, Tasmania has technically had an AFL team since 2023, when the agreement for a licence was signed by the Tasmanian government and the league.

That was a result of more than three years of negotiations, which came after more than three decades of banging on the AFL's door.

However, the team licence has always come with a caveat. It's only ever been technical. Conditional. With strings attached.

Like the razor-sharp blade of a guillotine, the Macquarie Point stadium has hung over the Tasmania Devils, with the AFL and its club presidents playing executioner — ready to see Tasmania's footy head roll if the stadium was not approved by the parliament.

Tasmania has been pardoned, though, via a majority vote through both houses of state parliament to approve the stadium. The blade will not drop. Tasmania will enter the AFL in 2028.

There was a theory that even if the vote failed, the Devils would survive.

But the upper house independents who green-lit the stadium — and the team — did not agree, deciding not to trifle with the AFL, which had never wavered from its roofed stadium condition of entry.

And there is historical evidence of the AFL's ruthlessness and commitment to a strong bottom line. It was less than 20 years ago that it attempted to relocate North Melbourne to the Gold Coast. 

In the 90s, it oversaw the 140-year-old Fitzroy merger with the Brisbane Bears. That's without even mentioning its repeated rejection of Tasmania.

There was nothing the Devils had done that could not be unpicked.

If the stadium vote was lost, the AFL would have copped a few bad weeks of PR. More likely, the blame would have been assigned to Tasmania, which made an unsolicited bid for a team, negotiated its conditions, signed a contract and then welched on the deal.

It was of course that stadium condition, originally imagined by Tasmania, then enforced by the AFL, that would be the seed for what grew into a state-splitting saga.

Cost of entry into the big league

What began as a united push for a team, born out of the states' famous State of Origin win over Victoria in 1990, devolved into a Tasmanian civil war — which independent Member for Elwick Bec Thomas described in her contribution to the debate this week as "sad and sorry".

The cost of entry into the big league? Huge. A $1.13 billion roofed stadium, $105 million to a slick new high-performance centre, $144 million of state funding to the club over 12 seasons. Upgrades to York Park. All at a time when the state's budget is on life support.

In return? AFL men's and women's teams, VFL teams, and $360 million in Tasmanian football funding, $209 million of which will go to the Devils.

Some believe it's all a little upside down, and polls have declared that the stadium is majority unpopular.

And one has to wonder why a project that was recommended not to proceed by the Tasmanian Planning Commission, and was heavily criticised by eminent economist Nicholas Gruen, has been supported by the federal government, both the state government and state opposition, and a handful of independents from all over the state.

It could be because it's never really been about a stadium, but about a team.

Something deeper is at play

A 23,000-seat roofed stadium at Macquarie Point is absurd without the Devils, and some have argued a team without that stadium is equally silly.

It could be why the stadium, and the Devils, have survived two state elections, multiple upper house elections, those aforementioned expert assessments and now a defining vote of both houses of the Tasmanian parliament.

There is clearly something deeper at play than seats, concrete and a roof. You simply couldn't vote for it otherwise.

It manifested on Sunday, when more than 10,000 supporters packed Parliament Lawns for one of the biggest rallies to be staged in Tasmania in recent memory — a week after a smaller but equally passionate crowd of opponents held a rally of their own.

For those Tasmanians, the stadium and Devils question has not been one of cost — it's been a question of worth.

Sometimes, you're happy to pay a large price for the things that are worth a lot to you, and Tasmanians have long been spellbound by the idea of a team in the AFL.

While all the economic evidence shows stadiums in isolation are a bad financial decision, governments around the world keep building them.

In Tasmania's case, it's because it comes with something deemed by many to be priceless — a Tasmanian team, wearing the almost mythical map.

There's clearly something spiritual for many Tasmanians about that primrose, myrtle green and rose-red Tasmanian guernsey. If it wasn't evident before, it is now.

Those of faith build grand cathedrals. Tasmania's religion may just be football. And for it, it will build a stadium.

As for the Devils, what happens now?

The question was asked of club chief marketing officer Kath McCann, and her response was simple: "Play on."

That may be easier said than done.

More than faith will be needed to build the stadium, a task made even tougher by a series of governance and financial guardrails insisted upon by a number of the independents who have supported it.

And just when the doors open is up in the air too, with the goal of Round 1 in 2029 appearing to be optimistic.

We aren't quite done with having awkward conversations with the AFL just yet.

At least talk can begin to shift to football. A coach, players, a captain, memberships, sponsors, a jumper, and a song.

Opponents have vowed to fight the stadium at every stage, but those in support may just be prepared to meet them in the trenches.

And the real key question won't be answered until some years into the future: will a Tasmanian team prove to be the holy grail, or the ultimate poisoned chalice?