The Devils Dilemma
Will the faithful jump amid all the Tas MANIA?
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As anyone who consumes HI would know, I'm a proud expat Tasmanian.
A born-and-bred Hobartian, I moved to Melbourne for Uni some 12 years ago – so I have now had well over a third of my life living in Victoria – but my heart still beats for home. Especially when it comes to sport.
I’m absolutely still a Tigers and Hurricanes man. I watch nearly every game the NBL’s JackJumpers play. Ariarne Titmus’s gold medals mean more than any other Australian. Ricky Ponting is still my all-time favourite sports person – he was a demi-god to a young Tasmanian kid at the peak of his powers. Whilst we’re here, Mitch Owen – I need a cold shower.
It’s hard to explain the Tasmanian psyche to someone who isn’t from there or hasn't spent a lot of time living there. As the state that is routinely punched down on - the kind of cute, harmless little brother – there is a perennial chip on the shoulder when it comes to giving it to the ‘mainland’. We have just 2% of the nation’s population but are always hungry to compete at the highest level in anything, especially sport.
The announcement that the AFL’s 19th license would be awarded to Tasmania was a very proud day, and it made me think of this six-year-old boy who told the ‘world’ in 2000 that the answer to all of Tasmania’s ills by the year 2020 would be to have an AFL team.
The business side of my brain knows the AFL needed to grow the game in boom population areas to ensure bigger participation growth, and a bigger TV audience to fund further rights deals. This, of course, was the rationale behind the decision in the late 2000s to award the 17th and 18th licenses to Gold Coast and GWS respectively. Tasmania was a captive audience, and it didn't serve any key metric of the AFL to give us a team at that time.
However, when I turn on the TV to see another sparsely populated stadium in Homebush with a trumped-up crowd figure or watch the latest episode of the never-ending debacle that has been the Gold Coast Suns, I burn at the injustice of it all. That team deserved to be ours, despite what the numbers said.
Football has been part of Tasmania’s fabric for over 160 years. Tasmanians are football people. My dad still talks about 1990 beating the Vics where 19,000 watched us win at North Hobart Oval, in a city of around 150k at the time. For reference – that's like a crowd of 580k at the MCG in 2025 with current populations.
But at the local level, the men’s game is declining – and has been for the best part of 20 years. Routinely, our best talent that isn’t drafted head to the SANFL and WAFL for further opportunities, diluting the local product further. Basically – there is no incentive for talented early 20s footballers who haven’t been drafted to stay.
I played the majority of my juniors and my first games of senior footy at North Hobart, and my Dad was President there for five years. Tassie footy club land is bloody tough. The continual drain of our elite talent to interstate has really hurt the ability to build a club for the long term.
Complete neglect from the governing body has seen the state league be allowed to die in favour of a return to regional based leagues (again). The quality of the league it was in the photo above, when games were locally televised, clubs were awash with ex VFL players, players such as Jeremy Howe and Aaron Hall were drafted directly out of it, and it had a level of prestige about it - is sadly gone.
The VFL team associated to the AFL team which was slated to start in 2025, isn’t happening now until 2026. Going back to three regional footy competitions with salary caps of just 80k is just mindless at anytime, but more so two years out from a VFL team and four years out from an AFL team.
I could write a 5000-word essay on the mismanagement of Tasmanian football alone – I won’t. However, I often wonder if we got a gig in 2008 when we launched the bid when backed by the Mars ‘Believe’ sponsorship how different the game at home would be now. The football eco-system in Tassie NEEDS this AFL team.
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been asked about where my allegiances will lie post 2028, I'd be a very rich man.
Will I be a Devils member? Yes.
Will I support them against 17 other AFL teams? Yes.
Will I probably go to their first game in Melbourne and wear a Devils scarf? Probably, yes.
WILL I CHANGE TEAMS?!
The answer, despite all I've outlined above – is no.
It will be a very, very odd day the first time the Devils run out against the Hawks.
It will feel like in a small way I am ‘betraying’ my home state by not supporting them - however I simply can’t do it. I cannot watch a game of football that Hawthorn are playing in and not support them. It just isn't fathomable for me. My purest and strongest sporting love, and one I've dedicated a significant portion of my 31 and a half years on the planet investing my time, passion and energy into – will always win out.
It’s a dilemma that every single Tasmanian football person will have to ask themselves over the next three years. Although the VFL/AFL has expanded into other traditional footy states for the first time before – see West Coast and Adelaide – this is different. That was in a time where their local competitions were still the top dogs somewhat competing with the VFL, and people identified with being a West Perth or Sturt supporter first with an ‘interest’ in a Carlton or Hawthorn for example.
This isn’t the case in 2025 Tassie. People are EXTREMELY wedded to their VFL/AFL sides. It will be an interesting challenge for the Devils. In my group chats and through talking to my friends and acquaintances back home, a lot are similar to me. Abandoning your current side is a very strange concept to people.
Despite this, they won’t be short on support. They’ll have packed houses from the get-go – as every single football person down there will support them against everyone else to start with. In time, with constant media coverage- and hopefully! success – they will convert more people to being full-time Devils.
The aim of the Devils shouldn’t be to fully and comprehensively convert people my age and older anyway. It should be to convert the newest generation into supporting their home state. For example, if my one-year-old daughter came to me in 4-5 years and said she wanted to support where mum and dad are from, and where her grandparents live, over the Hawks or my wife’s Blues – I'd be ok with that.
I think this is a rare example in football supporting where it’s OK to have a bob each way – to a degree. I will have a small place in my heart for when the myrtle, rose and primrose run around (its not green, red and yellow) - as I know the immense journey it’s taken by so many Tasmanians to get there. I will have a heart that swells with pride when I see TASMANIA on the fixture in Opening Round, 2028.
However, I can never abandon the brown and gold.
Go Hok.
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Nat, you finally sucked me in to a paid sub that I can ill afford.
I wantded to share my story - no, not my whole story - that goes way off track of footy and is the subject of a book.
I believe we werre the first Tssmanian Hawthorn family with my grandfather, a midlands pastoralist, supporting the underdog Hawks from 1925.
I received my first jumper in 1957, the year we first made the finals and have bled gold and brown ever since - our whole family.
We even had memberships back in the 60's and used them once a year to fly over to Melbourne in an old DC3 - the ones that you had to off load the back passengers first so that the planes didn't tip over - and watch our beloved Hawks from the old wooden members stand right below the bugler.
On one occasion,then President Ron Cook took me and my brother into the change rooms to meet the players before a fiery John Kennedy address - I got to meet my heros, John Peck and Brendan Edwards but I recall that John Winnieke was the one who paid us the most attention.
Anyway, yes, there was not a word of your article, notca sentiment so aptly described that I could not totally empathise with.
I left Tasmania at 15 but the loyalty to Tassie has never waned but nor has my loyalty to the Hawks.
I now live in Portugal after ten years in Brazil but will still get up at 2.30 am if neccessary to watch our games.
Because I learned about Tassie footy considerably later than I discovered the game (and the Hawks), the Hawks will always be my team - but I bought a $10 founding membership to help the team get off the ground. Bought a guernsey, too - it sits next to my Hawks hoody in my front closet. If I could afford to do it, I'd buy full memberships with the Hawks and Devils - not to mention tonnes of merch.
I don't know if TSN (Canada) will show the game the first time the Hawks and Devils clash, but I will be cheering for the Hawks - but it's good to know that the Devils will exist.