LAST Saturday, Launceston Football Club played in the grand final of the Northern Tasmanian Football League.

Monday's edition of the Launceston Examiner ran a half-page photo of the team the day after the match.

One of their number was body-painted, from the waist up, as Robin, as in the crime-fighting duo Batman and Robin, complete with mask.

Another, a tall, black man who appeared African, was bound in plastic wrapping from the elbows down. Included in the glowing mesh around his wrists could be discerned two stubbies now separated from his mouth by a wall of plastic. His was possibly the biggest grin, which is saying something.

To the right of the group was a bloke with a mobile phone to his ear and a frown on his face. He looked like someone about to be hit by a giant wave with 20-odd body surfers in it.

The piece de resistance was the sleeping player who had been wheeled in an easy chair to the front of the photo. Someone had scribbled on him with an orange felt pen.

In case you haven't guessed, Launceston won the premiership — its third in a row.

My father says the best game of footy he ever saw was when Launceston played New Town for the state title at North Hobart Oval in 1935.

Roy Cazaly, of Up There Cazaly fame, led New Town. Launceston, which was going for three state titles in a row, skipped out to a two-goal lead. Cazaly responded by dropping the Launceston centreman. He was backed up by the Rook brothers from Forth.

The Launceston charge was led by Jock Elmer, brother of the Tasmanian heavyweight champion. Jock's nephew, Mick, married my cousin. Now that's what I call a Tassie story, or, rather, it's the sort of story I heard in Tassie as a kid.

Mick, a stout-chested centreman, played for North Launceston and North Hobart. My father played for North Hobart. North Hobart lost to Glenorchy in last Saturday's Southern Tasmanian Football League grand final. Dad had a bad day. He was going for North Hobart in the south and Longford in the north. He used to coach Longford under 19s.

Longford got knocked out by Bracknell. Bracknell is a pub, half a dozen houses and a football club that refuses to die a few miles down the road from Longford.

Longford won the 1957 state premiership. We were living in the town at the time, and winning the state premiership was really something. Longford was a 10th the size of Launceston, probably less. But Bracknell is a 10th the size of Longford.

This, as I said, is a Tasmanian story but it does have national significance.

What they're saying down in Tassie right now is that Sydney only got 19,000 people to a final. They could have got more at Aurora Stadium. The idea of getting a Tassie team into the AFL is growing down there. It is being taken seriously in a way it never was before.

One letter to a newspaper said there had to be a way of suing the AFL for refusing Tasmania admission. The AFL has moved to re-establish the old state league. This will create a better standard of play. But it also threatens the following that remains for the Tasmanian clubs. Who's going to drive for five hours from Burnie to Hobart when you can sit at home and watch the AFL on television?

Footy's alive in Tasmania. It's part of the conversation that forms the general hum of life. I went to Hobart last weekend to see my mother, who had a series of strokes three weeks ago.

As I approached her hospital bed to see her for the first time since then, she told one of the nurses I wrote football for The Age in Melbourne and another nurse, a woman who barracks for Collingwood, said from a bed away: "Do you know Caroline Wilson?" Another nurse, a man in his 40s, said: "Is that Caro?" The male nurse went on: "She goes on too much for me," and the woman retorted: "That's because she knows what she's going on about." It was like being in a tunnel hearing voices outside make a soundtrack for the moment.

Tassie footy's got its pride back right now. The Examiner declared Richo, a Devonport boy, the sentimental favourite in next Monday's Brownlow Medal count. They're right. The Hobart Mercury — as an advertisement for a visit to the state by the Richmond champion later in the week — was running a "Colour-in Richo" competition. This was along with stories of former Governor Richard Butler getting a job at a university in New York and not including his governorship of Tassie on his CV! That roused the headline: Shame governor wins choice job.

Governor Richard, as he wished to be known by the populace, left the island prematurely, having bequeathed it a rich legacy of stories in the tradition of previous governors from early colonial times like David Collins (rumoured to have been poisoned by the settlers), Mad Tom Davey (in debtors' prison at the time of his appointment and the inventor of the "Blow My Skull" cocktail) and Sir John Eardley-Wilmot (recalled amid rumours, possibly untrue, about his moral character and a young woman from New Norfolk). Governor Richard stories are all his own but at their best and most humorous, they are about what happens when a global ego steps on to a local stage. One that has seen his sort before.

Tassie stories were usually about character, or they were when I was growing up there. A great Tassie character to have strutted the Melbourne football stage was Brent Crosswell. Crosser is famous for the statement: "Give me a grey day at the Western Oval and 15,000 people and I wasn't worth a cracker. Give me the MCG and 80,000 people and I was Hercules." And he was. My old man saw both Crosswell's father and grandfather play. It is a source of pride to me that I was inducted into the Tasmanian football Hall of Fame along with Brent Crosswell and the Queenstown gravel oval.

Here's a more recent Tassie footy story. On Monday, I read about Launceston, the northern premier, playing Glenorchy, the southern premier, for the state title today at the North Hobart Oval. The state finals were once famous matches. As I said, my old man reckoned the best game of footy he ever saw was the 1935 state final between Launceston and New Town. New Town later became Glenorchy. There could have been an echo of that match in the one scheduled for today had Launceston not pulled out on Tuesday over money.

What a pity. That was a chance to beat the drum of Tasmanian football history.