Opinion
A footy club meant to unite Tasmanians is bitterly dividing them
Richard Flanagan, 29 October 2025 — article courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald
For decades the dream of a Tasmanian team was the island’s passion and the nation’s sentimental hope. As the VFL went national in the ’80s and became imperial in its mien, renaming itself the AFL in 1990, Tasmania, with its outstanding footballing tradition, made several proposals to join the national league, each rebuffed, the AFL instead coveting colonising the larger population centres. Footy, once dominant on the island, withered. Desperation took hold. Advocates of a Tassie team came to believe that without an AFL side, footy was condemned to die on the island.
It took an organisation as ruthless as the AFL to exploit that desperation, demanding a blank cheque from a broke state for a new roofed stadium at a spectacularly inappropriate site in the centre of the last Georgian cityscape in Australia in order for the dream to be realised. The stadium has become, to most Tasmanians, a gigantic death cap mushroom they refuse to swallow.
The future of the Tasmania Devils hangs in the balance.