North Hobart Football Club goes back to the opening chapter in the history of Australian football. It is older than Collingwood, with 27 senior premierships, 12 state premierships.
When I came to live in Hobart in the early 1970s it had a fierce reputation. A bit like Collingwoods at that time. Or, in South Australia, Port Adelaides. Or, in West Australia, South Fremantles. North were the tough, working-class boys with a winning way. They are the oldest club in the south of Tasmania to still be playing at the top level, the second oldest in the island. The name means something.
Paul Williams was one of the many AFL players from North Hobart.
Photo: Craig Golding
Whats in a name? If the answer is nothing, why not call London, Paris? Because each name summons its own history, its own culture. Names matter. Everyones. And every football clubs, particularly a club with a proud history dating to 1881. I regard the forced name change – to Hobart City – imposed on the club by the AFL as part of a “rationalisation” of the statewide competition in 2013 as being worse than needless. It was utter folly. A club that had made a cumulative profit of $300,000 in the decade before the name change was left four years later with a debt of more than $100,000, its paying members having dropped by 75 per cent. These changes coincided with an alarming malaise in Tasmanian football, which is at last becoming apparent to people outside Tasmania.
There are many arguments to do with the origins of Australian football but on one thing all parties agree – the three letters, AFL, play no part whatsoever in the creation of the game. Unlike the deeply underwhelming AFLX, Australian football did not result from highly paid executives sitting around in an office, “brainstorming” ideas. It appeared like rock'nroll appeared in 1950s America, drawing its force from a series of cultural collisions that ended up creating a game that was fresh and exciting and a unique expression of the land its from. Its appeal transcends class, gender, religion and race. Very little transcends class, gender, religion and race.
Why does it do so? Because there is a genius to the game. It demands athleticism of a high order, and pulses with drama. Tom Wills, regarded by some as the founder of Australian football, proposed around the time North Hobart was formed that Geelong and Melbourne Football Clubs go to England and America to spread the game. But it didnt happen and, in the end, the game flourished in only four places on earth – West Australia, South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania.
