100%The Fireman wrote: ↑Sun 02 Apr 2023 8:46pm should have been one before the NSW and Qld extra teams BM.
The AFL were being arsehelos in not having a team in one of the most avid Aussie rules states if not the most avid outside of victoria.
We have the ANZAC day thing of course, and any other cause.
But Tassie doesn't count.
Tassie is part of the football culture in the country and AFL. A pillar .
However, sports bodies need some business sense, so I can understand why it wasn't so easy.
In cricket, same familiar rationales.
Cricket was played there in 1803, before Victoria was thought of.
They won the first ever first class match in Australia.
But they struggled and isolation, not only from the mainland, but the three mini-states within Tassie too. The south, the north and then the north-west*.
* Industry and mines silver, tin?, gold ? mines up there in the west north are had its own thing too, because they had a footy league too I believe.
Anyway, the point is, the mainland wanted Tassie in the Shield (notionally at least) but they were figured to be too out of the way, divided, weak and small. Not admitted to the Sheffield Shield until 1977 and only on a downgraded basis. 170+ years after a cricket ball was bowled (underarm?) there.