ANOTHER bold step towards the AFL’s Gold Coast and west Sydney teams was taken today when the inaugural meeting was held to determine how the new teams will get players.

The league’s working group – which consists of club chief executives, football and recruiting managers with input from the AFL, began sifting through submissions received from the 16 AFL clubs.

The group was established to assist the development of playing lists for two new AFL clubs based on the Gold Coast and Western Sydney.

AFL general manager of National and International Development David Matthews said today’s meeting was just a start.

“We had a good discussion today but there is still an enormous amount of work to be done in the coming weeks before any position is reached,” Matthews said.

“This is just the next step in the process.

“The working group will continue to work through the submissions over the coming weeks as well as debating the various elements of any list development strategy."

The GC17 group has been given until October to prove that it can drive a new team to south-east Queensland by 2011.

It has appointed favourite Queensland son Michael Voss as a consultant.

League chief executive Andrew Demetriou has already been impressed by what the GC17 team had achieved.

"They are doing great things with their bid at the moment, probably going a bit better than what even we expected. Corporate sales, the amount of people signing up, the amount of interest, all of it has been excellent,” Demetriou said recently.