The statement by AFL Commission chairman Mike Fitzpatrick, following Thursday’s AFL Commission meeting with club presidents in Melbourne for the 2008 AGM.
BEFORE I talk about the meeting with the presidents I would just like to go over again the important elements of the Annual General Meeting.
We saw today, Colin Carter, one of our longest-serving commissioners retire as a commissioner and I just wanted to thank Colin publicly for his passionate contribution to the game.
His intellect, his drive and his ideas have been a key factor in the growth of the game and our continual expansion. Colin spoke to the presidents and reminded them of the fact that every good idea has its critics in the initial stage. Then when the vision becomes reality everyone always wonders why we didn’t do it sooner.
His message to the Commission and to the presidents was to think boldly of where you want the competition to be in 20 years or 50 years. Not two months or two years.
We also welcomed two new commissioners – Christopher Lynch, who is the chief executive of Transurban and Justice Linda Dessau – who were elected to the Commission.
Now I want to talk about the meeting today where we took the presidents of the 16 clubs through our presentation on the need to expand our footprint into the Gold Coast and western Sydney.
And the clear message from that meeting is that today is an historic day in the history of the AFL and the AFL competition.
It is a day where the presidents have shared our excitement about the business case for expansion. They are excited by the future and they expressed their unanimous support for the principle of the expansion of the game from 16 teams to 18 teams.
They had a strong preference for going to 18 teams over 17 teams. And the very clear message from the club presidents was Get Going. Get to work on expanding the competition. Don’t waste any time. Do it.
Yes we need to do more modelling, yes there is more work to be done but the presidents have unanimously backed our plans for expansion.
As I said this is a historic day for the AFL – a day when we all stand together and work together to build a stronger, truly national code.
The other thing the presidents have asked is that we also do more work on securing better stadium deals for some of the other clubs. So we will make sure that we do not forget those clubs that currently don’t have a great stadium deal.
I have asked Andrew to take you through the highlights of today’s presentation to the presidents. But I want to say again how good it was to get the presidents together and update them on where we have got to on this issue, notwithstanding we have a lot of further work to do during the next six-nine months.
