Tasmania: We will Fight on

Tassie: We Will Fight On

EXCLUSIVE: Tasmania has followed Canberra to fight for A-League inclusion and wants the two bid teams to join forces to bolster both their campaigns.
Melbourne and Western Sydney will make up the 11th and 12th teams in the competition but that seems unlikely to be the end of the expansion process.

Canberra's bid chief has said he will not rest until the ACT is admitted and now the man leading Tassie's charge has stressed his desire to fight on.

Tasmania United taskforce chairman John McGirr said the Western Sydney decision came as no surprise and that the bid team was anything but disheartened at this stage of the process.

"It (the FFA's decision) hasn't deterred us at all," McGirr told au.fourfourtwo.com today. "We still believe that Tasmania can bring something to the A-League and that the support is there for a team in the competition.

"We continue to look at raising funds for the business case that we will need to formally put before the FFA and we continue to meet with business people."

McGirr admitted that there were both positives and negatives to emerge from developments at FFA HQ this week.

"The plus is that we have more time to get everything in place but the challenge is to maintain the levels of interest and support, especially if you are talking about something that won't materialise until say 2011," he said.

While Tasmania and Canberra must both present separate watertight cases to convince the FFA that they should be admitted to the A-League, McGirr wants the two bids to assist each other and keep the expansion issue in the public eye.

No contact has been made as yet but McGirr confirmed Tasmania would be in touch with Slavich and his team.

He added: "I think we could buddy up with Canberra and lobby on this expansion.

"We both believe we can bring something different to the competition, the game needs to expand beyond the eastern seaboard.

"I think adding 13 and 14 would add that freshness and you wouldn't have a situation where people get bored seeing the same team three times a season.

"But as for Tasmania's case, we know Tasmanians have a strong sense of affinity to their state and we're confident the support is there for an A-League team."

http://au.fourfourtwo.com/news/113930,tassie-we-will-fight-on.aspx

hooray for tassie!

I'm all for this because if wellington don't get omitted then we'll need another bid to come into the comp with us.

Is this maybe a bit of a memo to the FFA from Tassie? I mean, if they want to work together with Canberra, who are working with the FFA is this all that great for us?

hopefully the NYL team can come under the umbrella of Canberra United - to give the brand more exposure and a natural progression path for players into an A-league team shold we get one

thegezman wrote:hopefully the NYL team can come under the umbrella of Canberra United - to give the brand more exposure and a natural progression path for players into an A-league team shold we get one

If we can get a NYL team, with a name as Pete has said, it will give us a brand name and something we can associate ourselves with. It will bring in loads of support.

good on 'em.... do we know whether Sth Coast are going on