Caroline Wilson and Russell Skelton | February 16, 2008
THE AFL will launch a second Sydney team based at Blacktown as part of an ambitious expansion to challenge the power bases of rugby league and soccer.
Work is expected to begin soon on a $30 million, 10,000-seat sporting complex at Blacktown - in rugby league's heartland - which will be the home base of the new team.
The AFL is on the verge of announcing an 18-team Australian football competition, with a tender process to establish two new new teams: one on the Gold Coast by 2011, the other in western Sydney by 2012.
In an exclusive interview, the AFL's chairman, Mike Fitzpatrick, said he had held talks with all three AFL television broadcasters along with the Nine Network to signal the competition's intention to expand by 2012.
"We've got to go flat chat now," Mr Fitzpatrick said.
Establishing the second side will antagonise the Sydney Swans. The club has long insisted the competitive market is nowhere near ready for another AFL team. Not only would the new club compete with the Swans for fans, sponsorship dollars and grounds, it would be a rival to Sydney's rugby league teams, as well as the Sydney FC soccer team and the two other A-League clubs in NSW.
The team would play most of its home games at Olympic Stadium at Homebush Bay. But the new complex, to be built on the old 2000 Sydney Olympic baseball complex at Blacktown, would be its home base and training ground - as well as a NSW head office for the AFL. Although not big enough for the main AFL season, it would accommodate the pre-season NAB Cup competition - and should be completed in time for a such a fixture in March next year.
With administrative, corporate and social facilities, it would have parking for 1500 vehicles and lighting for night games. With about $20 million in funding from the NSW Government, it would incorporate the existing softball and baseball venues with an international-standard athletics track and two new ovals for football and cricket.
The Mayor of Blacktown, Leo Kelly, said: "There is plenty of support for a second club in Sydney's west. This is the second-fastest growing region in Australia after the Gold Coast."
The region had 5000 people a year moving in, and within five years it would have a bigger population than the Northern Territory, the ACT or Tasmania.
"A new club would produce a new generation of champions," Cr Kelly said. "The complex will put 300,000 additional people within a 30-minute travel time to an Aussie rules game."
Support for the Swans has traditionally come from the eastern suburbs and North Shore.
The plan would require finding 90 professional players to create the two new clubs. Conceding that it would prove "virtually impossible" to tempt even the most struggling Victorian club to move, Mr Fitzpatrick said: "It's quite clear the Melbourne clubs have emotional attachments and infrastructures they are not prepared to relinquish. It is an enormous task that lies ahead and we've got a lot of work to do, but I believe we can do it. We did a lot of work on the [North Melbourne] Kangaroos option last year but that wasn't all we were working on."
The AFL's resolve has been building since the Kangaroos rejected a $100 million offer to shift to the Gold Coast, coupled with the expansionist policy of domestic soccer and the strong foothold league has gained on the Gold Coast with the Titans. Mr Fitzpatrick, who took over as AFL chairman a year ago, said: "One of the issues I had when I came in was that we didn't have the relationship with government that we should have and other codes were organising themselves quite successfully around us."
Of the Kangaroos, he said: "We felt we put up the best offer we could and we were disappointed when they chose not to take it. I don't believe we've got any choice now. If you can't get a team to relocate on the basis that North was offered, then I don't think it's ever going to happen. In a sense it has solved a problem for us."
Mr Fitzpatrick and his chief executive, Andrew Demetriou, flew to Sydney before Christmas to outline the new expanded competition plans to channels Seven, Nine, Ten and Foxtel. The plan brings forward by three years Mr Demetriou's stated aim to schedule a game in Sydney every week by 2015. Mr Fitzpatrick revealed his organisation had already begun packaging a nine-game-round, home-and-away season to be sold as the linchpin of the broadcast rights beyond 2011.
With the bidding process for the Gold Coast team to be placed on the market within months, it is expected to be offered similar inducements to the $100 million package put to North Melbourne.
Dale Holmes, managing director of ALF NSW, said the Blacktown complex, still awaiting council approval, would eventually accommodate up to 15,000 spectators, with grandstand seating for 1500.
