The AFL’s Gather Round will return to South Australia for the next three years, with a requirement for “at least one” game to be played outside of Adelaide, according to Premier Peter Malinauskas.
Key points:
- The AFL’s inaugural Gather Round has been a success
- More than 200,000 fans flocked to games across South Australia
- Regional locations are jostling to host a game in their town
Mr Malinkauskas said he wants to use the event to promote more areas of South Australia.
“We want to give people a sense of what we can offer outside of Adelaide and regions like Adelaide Hills, McLaren Vale and even broader than that are what we want to showcase,” he said.
More than 220,000 fans attended nine AFL matches across Adelaide Oval, Norwood Oval and Mount Barker in the Adelaide Hills.
Mr Malinauskas said that Gather Round would have a requirement of one game played outside the city, and highlighted winemaking region Barossa Valley as a potential candidate.
The premier said he had wanted a game in the Barossa originally but that there wasn’t enough time to get facilities up to scratch.
“I was quite surprised that in the Barossa, which has quite a strong community league, that we didn’t have a ground that was up to that standard in any event,” Mr Malinauskas said.
“If we invest in a ground outside of Adelaide, we’re investing in a piece of infrastructure that community can use forever, like we have at Mount Barker.”
Other towns put up hand to host
While the AFL has signalled it would play only one game outside of Adelaide, Mount Barker mayor David Leach has said he was confident that Mount Barker would host a match next year too, even if the Barossa was the primary choice.
“We showed people that we can do it and do it very well,” he said.
Spencer Gulf Football League president Les Promnitz said the regional industrial city of Port Pirie, two hours north of Adelaide, should have been selected for the Gather Round in 2023 and should be selected in the future.
“We’ve hosted both SANFL and AFL matches so I don’t understand why we don’t get looked at when there’s no money to be spent here. It’s already here,” he said.
“One of the suggestions is that they don’t want to travel more than two hours for the AFL, but they’ve already done that. They did that for our AFL games.”
Meanwhile, Port Lincoln Football League operations manager Quinn Dutschke said he would like to host one of the games in Port Lincoln, which is seven hours from Adelaide, but said distance was an issue.
“We are a little disadvantaged due to where we are being quite a trip from Adelaide, that’s generally not in our favour, but we’d love to see it in the regions in the first place, but we’d put our hand up if the opportunity came up,” he said.
— Additional reporting by Angela Smallacombe and Bernadette Clarke