What the demise of a preferred Darwin basketball membership may imply for the NT's AFL workforce bid

With a catchy title, on-court success and massive crowds, it appeared the Darwin Salties had a magic system.

So when the High Finish basketball membership give up the second-tier NBL1 North competitors final month, citing an unsustainable monetary mannequin, it got here as a shock to most.

“They have been going fantastically,” veteran NT sports activities journalist Gray Morris mentioned.

“Spectator numbers and taking part in numbers in basketball are booming [in Darwin].

“However the Salties cannot discover a competitors to play in, as a result of it is simply too costly for them.”

The Salties have been based in late 2021, and joined each the lads’s and ladies’s NBL1 competitions the next yr, primarily based in Queensland.

In all three seasons the membership competed, its males’s aspect made the play-offs, whereas its girls’s aspect made the finals twice.

The Salties additionally attracted the league’s highest crowd numbers.

From the surface trying in, the membership was thriving. 

However regardless of being considerably backed by the NT authorities, its funds instructed a unique story.

“The Salties board has determined the present mannequin with [Basketball Queensland] just isn’t financially sustainable because it requires the membership to pay all its personal interstate [travel] prices and people of visiting … groups,” the membership mentioned in an announcement final month.

“These prices are extreme at a time when air journey from Darwin is at an all-time excessive. 

“No different NBL1 membership has this association.”

Acquainted story for NT sports activities

The Salties’ demise shall be a well-recognized story for different NT sport golf equipment which have did not survive in state, nationwide or Asian competitions.

The Darwin Cubs performed in soccer’s Singapore Premier League within the mid-Nineteen Nineties earlier than folding, whereas the Territory Storm competed within the Australian Netball League from 2008 till 2019.

The NT Stingers and Pearls have been additionally mainstays of the nationwide hockey competitors till 2018, once they have been excluded.

The Stingers are actually planning to affix the Malaysian Hockey League subsequent yr.

Chief economist on the College of Know-how Sydney, Tim Harcourt, mentioned there have been a variety of things that made it troublesome for NT groups to stay viable, together with the price of flights.

“It is exhausting with Darwin and the NT, with the tyranny of distance from the remainder of Australia, and even when they play in Asia,” he mentioned.

“[The NT’s small] inhabitants and financial base additionally makes it fairly powerful.”

Some of the high-profile territory sporting golf equipment to return and go was soccer aspect the NT Thunder.

It lasted longer than most, fielding groups over 11 seasons from 2009, initially within the Queensland Australian Soccer League, then within the North East Australian Soccer League (NEAFL).

The membership’s girls’s aspect additionally spent two years within the Victorian Soccer League.

“We have been very lucky we had good funding by way of federal and [territory] authorities and actually good assist from business companions,” NT Thunder’s inaugural chief govt Stu Totham mentioned.

“Again in 2008 [when the club was founded], the [NT] economic system was going fairly nicely.”

The NT Thunder received two NEAFL premierships, in 2011 and 2015.

However by 2019, sponsorship was down, the variety of NT gamers within the Australian Soccer League (AFL) had fallen and crowd numbers have been dwindling.

Mr Totham, because the then-chief govt of AFL NT, selected to wind up the membership.

He mentioned it was a “horrible determination” to make.

“I nonetheless take into consideration that call quite a bit, to be trustworthy,” he mentioned.

“However ultimately, the information did not lie. The data was there to make a name.

“We needed to rethink the place our cash was going … and that was a very powerful determination to … use that cash to return into group footy and grassroots.”

Would an NT AFL workforce work?

Regardless of the NT Thunder folding and the chequered historical past of Northern Territory sports activities groups, there is a push on for the territory to turn out to be the house of the AFL’s twentieth membership.

It follows Tasmania being awarded the league’s nineteenth licence final yr.

The Tasmania Devils are set to enter the competitors in 2028.

In Could this yr, the NT’s then Territory Labor authorities launched a enterprise case for establishing a Northern Territory, or northern Australia, AFL aspect throughout the subsequent 10 years.

It included an unfunded plan for the development of a Darwin CBD stadium at a value of as much as $735 million, with the admission that federal cash could be wanted to assist its supply.

Professor Harcourt mentioned the enterprise case “was fairly trustworthy” {that a} potential NT AFL workforce would want “a big diploma of public funding”.

However he pointed to the Papua New Guinea Nationwide Rugby League (NRL) workforce bid as proof that it may come to fruition.

The proposed PNG aspect is closing in on a deal value as much as $600 million with the Australian federal authorities to enter the NRL in 2028.

“It is the identical factor, it is a nationwide undertaking of significance past sport,” Professor Harcourt mentioned.

“The NT AFL workforce could be extra of an inside social profit, whereas the PNG workforce could be extra geopolitical.”

Professor Harcourt mentioned the case for an NT AFL workforce was “fairly romantic”.

“As soon as Tasmania acquired the nineteenth licence, everybody now needs the NT to occur. Folks see it as … the way in which to make the AFL a really nationwide competitors,” he mentioned.