Sorry Tassie, the AFL can’t afford to expand for a decade: Suns chair

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The massive financial impact of COVID-19 on the AFL meant it could not possibly expand with two more teams for more than a decade, Gold Coast Suns chairman Tony Cochrane said.

The warning from the last expansion club in the new market of south east Queensland signals a view in the AFL that Tasmania could not be added as an additional 19th or 20th team.

The comments from the head of a team in a non-traditional Australian rules football state that affect the prospects for a team in a struggling heartland state will rile people in Tasmania.

Tony Cochrane.Credit:Glenn Hunt

“We as a sport have been brilliantly run through the COVID period … having said that there are now a number of clubs with serious debt from last year and I don’t believe we can consider expansion in any description whether it’s Tasmania, Northern Territory or Wagga Wagga until we have 18 clubs financially bedded down, debt, cut financially growing again and that is at least 3 to 5 years and I think it is 10 or 15 years before we will be in a position to consider expansion,” Cochrane said.

On that logic Tasmania’s only hope for its own stand alone team would be from the relocation of an existing team, but that Cochrane said that was a separate discussion and not one he wanted to have.

Cochrane said expanding by one team was pointless as it did not add an extra game per round.

“One team adds a bye. No broadcaster pays any more for a new team just to have a bye,” Cochrane said.

“There is no value in just popping another team on the end. The Suns and GWS came on together and added circa $40 million a year for those two teams adding an extra game a round.

“Regrettably you have to expand in couple and I don’t think the game is in the position to look at that for at least 10 years.

“I have had conversations with other presidents its not appropriate for me to say with who but I would be more than shocked if the vast majority of presidents did not agree with me.”

Cochrane said it would be madness to look at expansion clubs like the Gold Coast, or GWS, and suggest relocate them as it would undo the work in the growth areas.

“That would be insanity. I cannot speak for GWS but you would be puling a team out of the fastest growth area in the country – there will be 1.1 million people on the Gold Coast by 2035, it will be the third biggest market in the country – and to go to the 12th biggest market in the country.

“You are not going to solve a problem by destroying the massive build we have in Queensland.”

He said the likelihood of Brisbane and south-east Queensland securing the 2032 Olympic Games only reinforced that argument for the Queensland teams as they would likely be significant beneficiaries of infrastructure spending.

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