I just read an article regarding the explosion of AFL in QLD - apparently in the South West and Gold coast areas. I will see if I can find it. I'm out of that scene nowadays with the kids no longer playing - but would be interesting to see - they cite the growth of clubs in the South West.
Try this:
https://archive.md/vFVMO.
The centre of the AFL universe will always be the MCG on the last Saturday in September, but the game is exploding in Brisbane’s western suburbs and further afield in the southeast corner of Queensland.
As the Brisbane Lions line up against Geelong in their third consecutive AFL grand final and seek back-to-back premierships, the NRL knows all about the rival code’s growth in the Queensland capital – even if it can’t bring itself to publicly acknowledge it. At a Microsoft Teams meeting of rugby league club bosses a week after the 2021 NRL grand final, ARL Commission chairman Peter V’landys argued the case for a 17th franchise to be established in Redcliffe, north of Brisbane.
“We’re under assault from the AFL in Queensland; that’s why we need this team,” V’landys said, according to three club bosses who were on the call.
The meeting, to that point, had been ill-tempered at best. When South Sydney chief executive Blake Solly questioned V’landys about the distribution of funds to the clubs when a new team entered the NRL premiership in 2023, V’landys infamously called him a “flea f..ker”. When it came to the location of the new franchise, Solly pushed V’landys even further. “If it’s so important to the game, shouldn’t we have a say on where it goes?” he asked. “Isn’t the west of Brisbane more important? Isn’t that where the team should go?”
V’Landys replied, “You’re a conspiracy theorist”, before shutting down the meeting. The Redcliffe bid won out over Ipswich Jets, based 40km southwest of Brisbane, and Brisbane Tigers, which outlined a desire to focus on Brisbane’s west as the Firehawks. Since entering the premiership, the Redcliffe Dolphins have been a slowly simmering success story. While few would begrudge their place in the NRL, most rugby league people in Queensland understand the booming western corridor from Brisbane’s CBD to Springfield, where the Brisbane Lions are based, out to Ipswich and beyond, represents the new battleground for hearts, minds and Auskick participants. Having failed to take over Sydney’s west, the AFL has homed in on Brisbane as the next frontier. And it is winning.
It’s not lost on NRL types that the new Olympic Stadium at Victoria Park (which will have a capacity of 63,000) will become the shiny new home of the Lions, post-Games. Then there’s the participation numbers which, according to the AFL, have more than doubled in recent times. This year AFL Queensland has a record-breaking 86,500 registered participants (a person who has opted in to an AFL program or competition). The largest increase has been in the AFL Superkick participation, which has been designed for children between eight and 12 and is focused on teaching the fundamentals of the game before they do match play.
AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon told The Australian: “AFL in Queensland has gone from strength to strength, with participation numbers continuing to surge across the state, with nearly 90,000 registered participants and still counting. This is incredible growth, particularly with women’s and girls’ participation increasing 117 per cent since 2019. “These numbers have been supported by continued investment in new ovals and facilities, and, coupled with the success of the Brisbane Lions and the Gold Coast Suns, it continues to drive interest and inspire the next generation to pick up a footy.”
V’landys can barely contain his contempt for the AFL when asked about its growing influence in the Sunshine State and its claims to have a booming participation base. “They must be counting people’s arms and legs, and I hear they also count you if you just look at an AFL ball,” he said. “Seriously, though, Queensland will always be a rugby league state, just as Victoria will always be an AFL state. Queensland is rugby league heartland. You just have to look at the success of the Broncos for that, and the Dolphins are growing, too. I’m not worried about them (the AFL) in Brisbane.”
Another Queensland-based league official quipped: “It’s rugby league and then daylight, participation-wise.” Broncos chairman Karl Morris is more complimentary of the rival code, saying he always laments when the AFL schedules the Lions at the same time as Broncos games during their respective seasons. He said he had friends who like to watch both teams, and that taxi drivers usually complain about the town being too busy.
The experts have their say on what they think will be the biggest talking points in the 2025 AFL Grand Final. But whether the Lions win or lose in Melbourne on Saturday, Brisbane will be a Broncos town come Sunday afternoon when the home team takes on Penrith for a place in the NRL grand final a week later. Suncorp Stadium sold out in an hour and Morris said all sorts of people had come out of the woodwork looking for tickets.
“It’s an NRL game so we don’t control the ticketing like we usually do,” he said. “So I went and bought 20 tickets myself just for the people I knew who would ring up. One bloke who called me I thought was dead already. I told him that and he said, ‘No, I’m still alive and I’m after two tickets for Sunday’. Incredible.”
The Broncos are a financial powerhouse, posting net profits that are bigger than just about any other sports club in the country. Morris points out that average crowds of 41,000 are the highest in team history and there are usually plenty of Broncos fans in the stadium when they play away from home as well.
But the AFL is playing the same long game in southeast Queensland as it is in Sydney. It has several reasons to be optimistic and pursue that second Brisbane team, according to former Gold Coast Suns chairman Tony Cochrane, who still wields considerable sporting influence in southeast Queensland and is now a director of the Games Independent Infrastructure and Co-ordination Authority that is overseeing the delivery of venues for the 2032 Olympics. “Next year, Queensland is going to be second only to Victoria in terms of AFL player participation numbers, which is growing at 12 per cent annually,” Cochrane said.
“The Lions have done an incredible job with AFL in Brisbane as well. Next year they’re probably looking at 80,000 members, which is incredible.
“Add to that, we’re about to have a brand-new state-of-the art stadium that will be the best in the country, and obviously lends itself to be occupied every weekend. Like Adelaide Oval is for the Crows and Port Adelaide, Perth has (at Optus Stadium) for West Coast and Fremantle. It just makes sense.” Cochrane noted that a city of four million people should have more than one team anyway, and believes it is a far more compelling proposition than having a 20th team go to a smaller market such as Darwin.
With the Lions sewing up the western corridor of Ipswich and fast-growing Springfield, where its $80m training base has been built, it would make sense, Cochrane said, for a second Brisbane side to have a geographic affiliation with the city’s north and the Sunshine Coast. “By 2032 that side of Brisbane and Sunshine Coast will have about three million people,” he said. “And the Suns are growing on the Gold Coast too. It’s close to having 750,000 people there and by the Olympics there will be 900,000-plus. So there is room for them and two Brisbane teams, and for them all to be growing.”
As for the Lions, not surprisingly, they are keen to keep the AFL spoils of being in a one-team (very big) town for themselves. New Lions chief executive Sam Graham recently said he believed Brisbane was still “a long way” from welcoming a second AFL team to the city. “Brisbane is a very exciting proposition for future growth in the game. In terms of where new teams go, that is a question for the AFL,” Graham told Code Sports.
He added that the Northern Territory was working in the background in preparation for a 20th team one day. Regarding Brisbane, he said it was “a long way into the future”. “Are the fundamentals there around the population growth, stadium, interest in our game generally? That feels like a very long way down the track,” Graham said. But a key to it all is the team’s on-field success – and for that to happen the best players in the game need to want to play there. Richard Colless, an architect of the success of the AFL in NSW and the longest-serving chairman of the Sydney Swans, said his powerhouse club and the Lions had tread similar paths – and, in turn, he said Brisbane had become a “destination” club for elite footballers.
In 1996, Fitzroy merged with the Brisbane Bears to become the Brisbane Lions. He points out how the Lions, too, have had their fair share of bleak times and highs, including a three-peat of premierships in the early 2000s, and are now a superpower on and off the field. “In the time I have been involved in footy there have been two sort of Lazarus-like events,” Colless said. “One was the Swans. I mean, we finished the bottom three times in a row, lost 27 games in a row. Ron Barassi was the reason we held it together and then things started falling into place … and I think it was similar with Brisbane. “The term ‘destination club’ gets thrown around a bit, but you can see they’ve become a destination club. I think it’s an amazing achievement by Brisbane, it really is.”
A senior rugby league official, who did not wish to be named, dismissed the AFL’s rise in the Sunshine State and said the entrepreneurial power of the NRL – and the code’s history in Queensland – were often underestimated. “The AFL is like China and rugby league is the European Union,” the league official said. “It’s got a whole different variety of personalities, rich and poor, but there’s entrepreneurial spirit that emerges everywhere across the state that allows it to survive and thrive. Some of the best things about our game are not born out of head office. “Look at Gold Coast Suns and the Giants, they were formed off the back of a corporate strategy … the Giants were born out of a document … while the Gold Coast Titans were a Michael Searle dream … the Dolphins had 75 years in history before they joined the NRL.” Queensland Rugby League chief Ben Ikin reinforced that league remained the No.1 sport in the state, but the former Bronco didn’t see the rise of the Lions as a bad thing.
“A successful Lions franchise is not a new consideration for rugby league in Brisbane or Queensland,” Ikin said. “Their three-peat back in the early 2000s was a magnificent thing for our city, but, to be fair, their success was bookended by two premierships at the Brisbane Broncos in 2000 and 2006, which then rolled into eight straight State of Origin series wins for the Maroons. “And while I’m sure the doomsayers were making comparisons between the two codes back then, I’m pleased to report that 20 years on, the NRL and AFL are both still alive and thriving in Queensland today.”
