AFL CHAIRMAN Mike Fitzpatrick and chief executive Andrew Demetriou remain "bullish" about western Sydney as the home of the competition's 18th club from 2012, despite the state of the economy and pessimistic talk surrounding the franchise's entry.

Fitzpatrick said negativity was largely generated by the media, while skepticism came from people who didn't know enough about the region.

He added that the AFL wasn't expanding into western Sydney for "no reason and just because we want to give ourselves a hard time".

"We're doing this because we think it's going to be in the benefit of the game," he said at a media briefing in Melbourne on Tuesday.

"We think it's going to give us access to more sporting dollars and we think in the end, that'll be to the benefit of all of the clubs in the competition now. That's the point of doing it.

"We've still got them [entering the AFL] at 2012 for a variety of reasons. We think we'll be able to pull the timetable together, slightly more quickly than Queensland.

"We're looking at an advisory group being put together in June … and we're still confident it can go ahead."

Demetriou said the AFL is aware of the work required to get the prospective club up and running, but added it had greater infrastructure in place than Gold Coast, which has a better support base.

Planning had been going for "the better part of 10 or 12 years".

"We know it's a huge challenge," he said. "We know it requires significant investment and very carefully thought-through strategic priorities. But we have got a plan mapped out for this year, which follows the similar lines to Gold Coast.

"It will be a different football club. It will be unlike any other football club we've got in the competition. It's situated in an area that is multiculturally diverse. We've got indigenous academies in the area. We haven't got the fan base that we have in other areas and it will be a challenge, but it's a challenge we're prepared to take.

"That's the difference between this and the Gold Coast club."

Fitzpatrick noted that the bigger population of western Sydney was another positive, meaning that "the strike-rate doesn't have to be as high".

The League has already collated a list of 35 people interested in being on the western Sydney advisory board and is also targeting another 10.

"I'm pretty confident that they'll be interested," Demetriou said.

"I'm sure we'll get a very talented group, like the Gold Coast advisory group, who will set the same sort of criteria. I can assure you there are people who have approached us to be involved in this football club from various backgrounds – both business and sport and from other codes. We've been really, really pleasantly surprised."

Demetriou said the AFL was only able to expand the game in New South Wales because of success of the Sydney Swans – premiers in 2005 and finalists for the last six seasons.

He noted that Swans staff would not be poached to help set up a new club.

"We want to work with the Swans to set up an advisory group to work with them on some of their strategies," he said."We want them to be a strong football club.

"We want this [western Sydney] club to help the Swans because we think they need some help, because they've been doing some heavy lifting against a lot of competition.

"There were enormous lessons learned from the past.

"That was a massive challenge for the Swans and it almost proved their downfall a couple of times."

Demetriou said the Sydney Showgrounds stadium also had great potential as an AFL venue.

"It's a fantastic facility. Again, it's another option. At the moment, it requires additional funding to get it up to AFL standard," he said.

"I think it's something we'll continue to look at. It'll become a viable option for the AFL."