Almanac Footy: Defending the Territory – Where Will the AFL and NRL Go Next?

May 26, 2025 by Leave a Comment

By Tim Harcourt

 

We now have more pieces in the puzzle as the Australian Football and League (AFL) and National Rugby League (NRL) expand their competitions.

 

In the NRL, Papua New Guinea (PNG) and, most recently, the Perth Bears have been announced as the new clubs. In the AFL, the Tasmania Devils will be the 19th club in the competition. But where will each code find a final club for team number 20? Competitions usually like an even number of teams, so it is assumed they won’t stop at an odd 19.

The NRL might go for another team in New Zealand to continue the global expansion. The new stadium in Christchurch might be a good home base for a South Island team as a rival to the Auckland-based Warriors on the North Island. They may even make the team a Pacific Island team like Pasifika in Super Rugby. The other option is the Ipswich Jets in the Western Brisbane Corridor. Ipswich is Rugby League heartland, producing greats like Allan ‘Alfie’ Langer and the Walters brothers and, as we move west of Ipswich, Shane Webcke, Steve Price and Darren Lockyer.

 

Ipswich could also have a tie in with the Newtown Jets, a disbanded club in inner Sydney, in the same way the Perth Bears have a tie to the Old North Sydney Bears Club.

 

The Central Coast, who has an A-League club, the Mariners, has also been mentioned. But now the Bears have been revived as a Perth franchise, that closes the door on the possibility of the Central Coast Bears idea that had been floated.

 

For the AFL as a domestic game, there are no options beyond our shores. Tasmania is due to join in 2028, and the league might want them consolidated before looking for a 20th team.

 

As mentioned in a previous article, the candidates for AFL 20 are a Darwin-based team in the Northern Territory (NT), Canberra, Australian Capital Territory (ACT), or a third team in Western Australia (WA) or South Australia (SA)

In Western Australia, the WA Football Commission (WAFC) has ruled out a third team, even if it does have the economic means and population growth. But the view is having the West Coast Eagles and Fremantle Dockers is enough, especially now with the Perth Bears joining the WA sports marketplace.

In South Australia, Norwood has been mooted as a possible third club to join the Adelaide Crows and Port Adelaide. The AFL’s popular ‘Gather Round’ features Norwood Oval as classic footy venue and Norwood has just as rich a history as Port Adelaide. (see link below). But SA has a smaller population and is not as rich as WA, so it’s considered unlikely to be granted a third AFL licence. The view also is that SA and WA are both already footy heartland and well serviced by two local clubs with a fierce rivalry that is well supported and promoted in their respective home towns.

That really leaves the battle of the territories – ACT versus NT – for the final AFL licence.

 

In the case of Canberra, they have a strong Aussie Rules tradition, as a result of many public servants moving from Melbourne to Canberra in the early times, and they are surrounded by the AFL strong areas of southern New South Wales and the Riverina. Their proximity to Sydney and Melbourne and suitable climate and time zone, as well as a local population with good incomes in Canberra, and nearby regional towns with footy mad supporters (who would be able to travel to Canberra for games) all make a good case. Plus, the AFL (or then VFL) may have always regretted not going to Canberra soon and allowing the NRL’s Canberra Raiders and Rugby Union’s ACT Brumbies to get a beach head in the area.

But there’s a Giant problem for a new team in Canberra: the Greater Western Sydney Giants are considered Canberra’s team, playing three games a year at the local Manuka Oval, and building up a promising ACT academy drawing on AFL talent in southern NSW. Would a new Canberra team weaken the Giants just after they’ve built up the academy and support in the ACT? Or would it in fact allow them to better focus on Western Sydney, which is rugby league and, to some extent, soccer heartland? Would the AFL move the Giants to Canberra, or is the need to keep a presence in Western Sydney too important? These are threshold issues facing the AFL in terms of their NSW/ACT strategy.

 

That leaves the Northern Territory as the final frontier. When the Tassie Devils join the AFL, Darwin will be the only capital city in Australia without an AFL or NRL team. Will the AFL go in and defend their territory which it failed to do in Canberra all those years ago?

 

The case for a NT team in the AFL – to be called the Darwin Dingoes or Darwin Crocs – is considered a romantic notion in some ways, but the footy case is strong. The NT has produced rich reservoirs of football talent from Alice Springs to the Arafura Sea. Playing talent like Michael Long, the Rioli family, Andrew McLeod and Nathan Buckley roll off the tongue of any Aussie Rules diehard, and many NT (often Indigenous) players become famous in the state leagues of SA and WA as well as the AFL. Many play in the Northern Territory Football League (NTFL) before heading down south in what is the ‘off season’ for the Top End.

 

In fact, according to James Coventry’s neat little 2018 book, Footballistics, the NT is truly Aussie Rules heartland in terms of participation and talent. According to Coventry, the NT often comes top in terms of in terms of ‘footy readiness’ and participation rates. For a small population of just over 240,000 people, over thirteen percent of Territorians participate in AFL programmes, compared to eight per cent in WA, six per cent in SA and two per cent in Victoria. The NT is top in terms of adult participation and top four for children’s participation. In fact, in non-metropolitan areas, Coventry found there were 22,000 registered participants in 2018, meaning every child outside Darwin and Alice Springs plays footy, not allowing for the many unregistered participants who are also playing. In 2022, this had grown to around 40,000 participants. In regard to talent, NT produces 56 elite AFL players per million people, with only Victoria and SA ahead.

 

And in the NT, they simply love footy. Just watching the finals from the Tiwi Islands or Central Australia will tell you that! It also shows up statistically with almost half the population favouring the AFL column in terms of Google searches, ranking it with the traditional Aussie Rules states Tasmania, SA, Victoria and WA.

 

In their strategic business case for the 20th licence, the NT AFL Club Taskforce has examined a number of options. These include more AFL matches in Darwin and Alice Springs, a relocated team, or a Darwin based stand-alone Northern Territory team that also plays in Alice. They even consider a Northern Australia team (Darwin-based, but also playing in Cairns in Far North Queensland). Although, it may be better to have the Queensland teams – Brisbane Lions and Gold Coast Suns – develop Far North Queensland, Central Queensland and the Sunshine Coast, and let the NT team focus on Darwin and Alice Springs. Hawthorn is also considering playing a few games in Cairns.

Of course, that’s the footy case. It seems open and shut, but the economic case for the NT is much harder, especially given climate, population and financial considerations if the NT team requires a new stadium or upgrades to TIO stadium in Darwin and TIO Traeger Park Oval in Alice Springs. As experience shows with NT teams, even the basketball team the Darwin Crocs struggled

Even with a significant AFL contribution of $7.83 million per year, the taskforce forecasted that the NT AFL Club would need federal and NT Government to fund an operation funding gap of $18.89 million per annum. This would include a new or upgraded stadium, with AFL NT chairman Sean Bowden explaining that: “The stadium will anchor the opportunity to bid for a 20th licence in the AFL should that opportunity arise.” However, the taskforce noted that: “the economic benefit to the NT could be as much as $559 million if the new club was provided with a new stadium. The strategic business case indicates that an AFL team would create 160 full-time jobs, bring game day activation of the economy and add $116M a year in economic output to the Territory economy.”

Hand-in-hand with the economic benefits comes the social impacts. The NT has a serious problem with diabetes and associated health problems, low educational attainment and imprisonment. The taskforce would develop pathways for participation not only for elite footballers in an AFL and AFLW team, but also create a social safety net of social programs for all Territorians under the umbrella of the NT AFL team. Social cohesion is important for internal security in the same way as defence is important for external security.

 

In some ways, the NT team might be considered a national security project for internal social cohesion. For example, the PNG team in the National Rugby League (NRL) is getting support from the Commonwealth Government for geopolitical reasons (external security) to the tune of $600 million as part of a $750 million ambitious investment by the NRL.

An AFL team in Darwin might be considered in the same way. Darwin was the only capital city bombed in war time in 1942 and is considered to be vital to our defence strategy. With new tensions in global geopolitics, we will see a review of our defence assets and arrangements. For instance, the lease of the Port of Darwin to a Chinese Government-linked company would never have happened in today’s global climate.

 

So just like having an NRL team in PNG, the Commonwealth might consider having an AFL team in Darwin as important to national security.

 

And as many seasoned commentators (hello Ross Gittins) always say: what do you do when economists question a project? Put it in the defence budget under ‘national security’. It may be a stretch to consider it part of defence, although the AFL might like this as it would allow them to ‘defend their territory’ and keep the NT a predominantly Aussie Rules zone.

 

There’s no doubt that the Aussie Rules footy community would love it. As the legendary AFL commentator Bruce McAvaney once said, the NT would ‘complete the jigsaw’ in the national competition of Australia’s truly indigenous home-grown game.

There’s that romance coming up again. Australia’s only indigenous game with AFL teams from Tasmania to the Top End, and from the East Coast to the West Coast in every Australian capital city. It might be just too much for the AFL, as custodians of the great Australian game, to resist.

 

Professor Tim Harcourt is industry professor and chief economist at the Centre for Sport, Business and Society (CSBS), University of Technology Sydney.  

 

 

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