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Pickard picks hard on third team
Posted Oct 27, 2009 - 7:34 AM
By Mr Dandalooa
Recently-elected Joondalup mayor Troy Pickard reckons the state could do with another AFL team and he wants to meet league boss Andrew Demetriou to push his case for Joondalup to be the next home to a club.
While it could be 10 years or more before the state gets another team, Pickard believes going north would be a better option for a new club than the South West.
Pickard’s statement comes after Demetriou said last week that WA and northern Queensland were prospective locations for a possible 20th team, although he did say the AFL was in no hurry to grant such licenses.
According to Pickard, the third WA team would train and be headquartered at Arena Joondalup, but would most likely play its matches elsewhere.
The idea of a third team in WA was greeted warmly by the WA Football Commission, West Coast and the Fremantle Football Club, who immediately raised their reservations about the sustainability of another club.
But Pickard said a Joondalup team would be beneficial to the state and would not encroach on the support base of the existing clubs.
Pickard believes his city’s case is compelling and wants to wax lyrical with AFL boss Demetriou in a bid to tap into a new market in the northern corridor.
Although the WAFL’s West Perth plays at Arena Joondalup, relocating to the area in the mid-1990s, Joondalup as an area has some points against it hosting a third AFL team.
For one, about 50 per cent of Joondalup’s population was born overseas.
There probably isn’t a stronger football base than in the southern corridor heading towards Mandurah.
But as a region that covers an area of 99km-square from beach to bushland and is close to the city and CBD, with enough financial backing it could just work.
Either way, it could be a good move for Joondalup to get in bid early despite how far off a third AFL team is, because if this state is anything to go by, with all the bureaucracy and red tape, it could be a long and arduous process between the state government, WAFC, AFL and the council itself.
