Premier Jeremy Rockliff had commended the “believers” – an echo,maybe unconscious,of Paul Keating’s “true believers” speech that also followed an improbable victory (1993),while McLachlan and deputy PM Richard Marles,a full-blown Geelong tragic,had also recounted how Tasmania had produced legends in Hudson,Baldock,Hart,“Richo” and Riewoldt who had been forced to ply their trade on the mainland.
‘You’re going to have the most passionate supporters behind you because it is their state,it is their island,and they’re going to be barracking for their team.’
Proud Tasmanian and triple-premiership Tiger,Jack Riewoldt
“A 19th club in Tasmania,for Tasmania,uniting Tasmania,” said McLachlan.
But was it really Tasmania United? Not exactly.
Those assembled on North Hobart Oval – the same oval where the Tasmanian state of origin side,coached by a passionate Robert Shaw,upset Victoria back in 1990 – might have all backed both the entry of Tassie and the massive stadium construction and urban renewal project at Macquarie Point.
But it is also very Tasmanian to have significant dissent on an issue that involves a huge project,instigated by a powerful mainland-based vested interest,that some locals feel has been imposed upon them.
To be clear,there is broad support for the Tassie team. The dissent centres on the use of a) the Macquarie Point site for the stadium,and b) the expenditure of Tasmanian dollars – and there aren’t too many – on a lavish facility when,as the Hobart mayor recently put it,Tasmania already had “two perfectly good stadiums” at Bellerive (Blundstone Arena) in Hobart and the University of Tasmania stadium in Launceston,where North Melbourne and Hawthorn having been playing four home and away games each respectively.
The AFL has secured a deal in which the risks of a budget blowout rest with the Tasmanian government,rather than the league,which is investing $360 million in the team and Tassie footy over a decade,but only $15 million in the stadium.
Therein lies the AFL’s model:We give you a team,you build us a stadium. The AFL has been astonishingly successful in persuading governments,of all stripes,to pay for the cost of their new or upgraded stadiums in Perth,Adelaide,Gold Coast and Geelong,not to mention the MCG and Marvel Stadium.
Macquarie Point is so identified with what some locals see as an AFL shakedown that it might as well be re-named McLachlan Point.
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For the critics of the new Hobart stadium – and these include the local RSL,the writer Richard Flanagan,the state Greens and ALP leadership and local member Andrew Wilkie – Macquarie Point is unnecessary,when the dollars in their minds are more needed elsewhere. Per capita,Macquarie Point will be the equivalent to spending $12 billion on a stadium in Victoria.
But on this day when gloomy skies were belied by the upbeat spirit of Tasmanian football and by the sense that justice has been delivered and history was on the turn,Macquarie Point wasn’t the main point.
Tasmania had been given full football statehood. That act of recognition,not government dollars or priorities,was what counted.
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