HAWTHORN president Andrew Newbold has reinforced his club’s long-term commitment to Tasmania and also hit back at controversial comments made by AFL Tasmania last week.
Addressing members ahead of Sunday's clash with the Brisbane Lions in Launceston, Newbold made clear his displeasure at remarks from AFL Tasmania chief executive Scott Wade regarding the prospect of the island state having a side to ‘call its own’ – possibly at the expense of current deals with Hawthorn and the Kangaroos.
"We continue to be pretty disappointed by the comments that have been made on behalf of AFL Tasmania and I also want to make it very clear that if Tasmania gets its own team then Hawthorn has no place in Tasmania," Newbold said.
Under the current arrangement – which is set to continue through to the end of 2016 – the Hawks play four matches at Launceston’s Aurora Stadium each season.
This deal maintains a relationship between Hawthorn and Tasmania that originated in 2001 and has seen the Hawks spend considerable time and money fostering a relationship with the local community.
North Melbourne began playing games at Blundstone Arena in 2012 and has one season to go on a three-year deal to play two games a year.
But according to Wade, AFL Tasmania would be best-served by an exclusive deal that saw one side play eight matches in the state every year.
"Hawthorn has done a magnificent job for a long time, and North has made a good start, but to be honest most Tasmanians don't see either as their team," Wade said.
"We actually believe that we're going to be able to present a proposal whereby the state of Tasmania may well be an attractive market for a number of AFL clubs.
"(We want) an AFL club in Tasmania that we can develop a long-term relationship with, whereby the club is one Tasmanians call their own."
Given Hawthorn’s long-standing association with Tasmania and the State Government’s naming rights sponsorship, Newbold seemed particularly concerned by the poor timing of Wade’s comments.
"The comments which we found most disappointing were that 'agreements get torn up all the time', which was something that I found very difficult to understand," he said.
"I didn’t know whether that was referring to our agreement with AFL Tasmania where we commit to spend $150,000 on young talent in Tasmania … the general theme of what was said was disappointing also because we didn’t receive a phone call to just let us know in the week leading up to the game that those sort of comments would be made.
"From Hawthorn’s point of view we can only control how we behave. We think we behave properly, we continue to build the relationship with the people of Tasmania who are important to us.
"We’ve got nearly 9000 members in Tasmania (and) they remain important to us.
"If Tasmania gets its own team we are fully supportive of that, but we think we’ve got a future here for as long as they don’t."
