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Roos might hop to Hobart

By Mr Dandalooa

North Melbourne head honcho Eugene Arocca has denied widespread rumours that the club has agreed to play four games a year at Hobart’s Bellerive Oval.

Recent reports claim the Roos are frontrunners to play there on a regular basis.

An AFL spokesperson said the league was negotiating about staging a number of games in Hobart, that an agreement would not be announced until next month.

They said there were several other clubs that could play their too.

It is understood that Richmond president Brendon Gale met Bartlett and Cricket Tasmania chairman Tony Harrison several weeks ago.

But Arocca blatantly said: “There is no deal. We haven’t sat down with anyone from Tasmania about a deal.”

He did concede the club were the frontrunners “but we need to get our heads around what a deal will look like”

Hawthorn has a $16.4 million sponsorship deal with the Tasmanian Government to play four matches per season in Launceston.

FootyGoss has learned the AFL’s preferred option is the Roos because of the lower crowd numbers in Melbourne.

North Melbourne rejected a $100 million AFL package to relocate to the Gold Coast at the end of 2007, so it is still uncertain what the terms of the deal will include.

Emails to the club and to Hobart’s Bellerive Oval management went unanswered at the time FootyGoss published this article.

But since rejecting the Gold Coast offer, the Roos have been stressed it intends to remain permanently Melbourne-based.

“This is not a precursor to moving the North Melbourne Football Club down to Tasmania,” Arocca said.