IN APRIL last year, then deputy AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan said the "ideal model" for Tasmanian football was for one AFL team to play games in both Launceston and Hobart.

It was widely expected the AFL would try to implement that model at the end of 2016 when Hawthorn's Launceston deal and North Melbourne's Hobart deal were both set to expire.

But Hawthorn's announcement last week that it had signed a new five-year contract to play in Launceston scuttled any such plans.

The Hawks have previously stated they are not interested in playing any more than the four home-and-away games they play at Aurora Stadium each year, while their new deal effectively paves the way for North to secure its own five-year extension in Hobart.

The AFL is said to be privately seething that the Hawks' actions have thwarted its long-term plans for Tasmania for at least another five years, largely because the League was understood to be still exploring ways a one-team model might be implemented in Tasmania from 2017.

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Hawthorn is believed to be keen to play more Victorian teams in Launceston, having played just the Western Bulldogs there in the past three seasons.

However, the Hawks remain reliant on the AFL to meet their fixture requests. We await the release of the 2016 fixture with interest. 

Fixturing one team in Tasmania has been on the League's agenda since at least late 2010, when it unsuccessfully tried to broker a deal for North to play seven games a year between Launceston and Hobart.

AFL Tasmania chief executive Scott Wade said in June 2013 that ideally one team would play eight games a season in Tasmania, splitting them equally between Aurora Stadium and Hobart's Blundstone Arena.

Last April, McLachlan said the questions of which team represented the Apple Isle and how many annual games it played there were "complex".

Before Hawthorn's announcement last week, it is believed the AFL was toying with a model in which one team would play six games a year in Tasmania, three each at Aurora Stadium and Blundstone Arena. 

Such a fixture is not possible now until 2022 at the earliest. 

This enforced delay is hardly likely to deter the AFL though.

We expect it will use the next six years to refine its Tasmanian vision.

"We're an attractive proposition for a club that might want to embrace Tasmania as their primary development market without having to relocate," Wade told AFL.com.au two years ago.

"(We want) an AFL club in Tasmania that we can develop a long-term relationship with, whereby the club is one Tasmanians can call their own." 

Finding a team prepared to play at least six games a year in Tasmania shapes as the AFL's biggest challenge. 

Like Hawthorn, North has already said it would not look at extending its present number of games.

So the AFL will probably have to convince another team to help make its Tasmanian plans a reality. 

Even if manages to do that, the League will still have to convince the Tasmanian Government and other relevant local stakeholders that that team is the team for Tasmania.

It won't be easy.

But the AFL has six years to make it happen.