Opinion
Tas-mania: How the devil did new AFL club pull so many members?
Greg Baum
Sports columnistIt’s pointless to put in here a figure for the number of people who have signed up as founding members of the Tasmania Devils because by the time you read it, it will have swollen again. Let’s just say it’s in six figures.
The moral here is not just about the volume – which is greater by far than the AFL or the new club had anticipated – but the rush in which they arrived. It’s wonderful for the club, which can now with hand on heart call itself that (while patting its pocket with the other hand; did anyone ever make their first million more speedily?).
Richmond great and Devonport product Matthew Richardson at the launch of the Tasmanian AFL club’s colours, name and logo.Credit: AFL Photos
But it also contains a lesson for the AFL, and for political and civic leaders generally.
Only some will convert to full members at the full rate when the time comes. And it’s anecdotally evident that a portion of the new subscribers were not Tasmanians and do not live in Tasmania. There were three in my office. I was one.
This is the nub of the lesson. As much as a purchase, this inaugural Tassie Devils membership is a gesture. When so many make this gesture spontaneously and at once, the sum of those gestures can be called a movement.
If I can presume to speak on behalf of the non-Tasmanians, I’d say that movement is about solidarity. It’s solidarity with the certainty that there should always have been a Tasmanian team in any national Australian football competition, if not right from the start, then long before now.
AFL chief Andrew Dillon with players to launch the Tasmanian Devils football club.Credit: Getty
It’s solidarity with the idea that the past matters as well as the future. It’s solidarity with the belief that footy has more meaning and plumbs greater feelings in some communities than others. This has surprised even a Tassie footy diehard of this column’s long acquaintance.
That’s not to say that the other new points on the footy compass don’t have their passions. But Tassie is a footy state. It’s in the fabric of the place. As long as there was no Tasmanian team in the national competition, it felt odd to watch GWS and Gold Coast slug it out in front of a few thousand elsewhere. In fact, it felt like a betrayal.
That’s not to knock either of the younger northern clubs, who can do only what they can out there on hostile frontiers (and frontiers they are; a decade later, western Sydney is no closer to being claimed for AFL than it was to begin).
Nor is it to say that the AFL should not have pursued expansion. But it is to say that it should never have been one or the other. It should never have been growth instead of consolidation. It’s the wealthiest sport in the country by far.
For years, we were told that footy’s priority was to go where the people were. Meanwhile, from all accounts, footy in Tassie withered. It was a dubious blueprint, to say the least. It either took for granted Tasmania, one of the game’s richest heartlands, or took no account of the state at all.
Opening round was yet another gimmick to artificially inseminate footy into a barren landscape. For one week, it worked well enough, but on week two, barely 8000 turned out to watch the Giants, a likely premiership side this year. Meanwhile, 50,000, I mean 100,000, make that 120,000, signed on for a club whose men’s team won’t play a game in earnest until 2028.
That explosion of devilry is a greater augury even than its raw number. The most surprising story in Australian sport in recent times has been the emergence of Tasmania’s Jackjumpers in the NBL. In three years, they have made two grand final series; the second is in progress.
Further, they are the third most-watched NBL club, reflecting solid expat support. The Devils can expect the same. And to think that we were told Tassie was too small. In a sporting world funded and driven by television, it was always a disingenuous stance.
Like the Giants and Suns, the Devils necessarily will be a manufactured team to start. Unlike them, they won’t have to manufacture a support base. There won’t be 100,000 members, but there will be something even better: a beating heart.
Tasmania JackJumpers players celebrate their semi-final win over Perth with coach Scott Roth.Credit: Getty Images
That’s not to say there won’t be teething troubles before then. There’s one already; the thorny matter of the stadium. It will be front and centre when Tasmanians go to the polls on Saturday. But there’s so obviously a will, and so there will be a way.
The trigger for the stampede to buy founding Devils memberships on Monday was the unveiling of the new club’s jumper. Stylistically, it met with mixed reviews; critics thought it naff. Yet still the bandwagon groaned.
The design wasn’t anywhere as naive as it seemed. It wasn’t meant to make some sort of pan-Tasmanian statement, or catch the eye of an influencer, or appear on a catwalk.
Though it will be refined by 2028, it was and is a classic footy jumper, in which to play footy, for a footy team, in a footy state. One hundred and plenty thousand ticked it off.
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