ULTIMATELY, the future of the Kangaroos, formerly known as North Melbourne, should be a matter for the members of that club.

It ill-behoves an outsider such as myself to come out strongly with a view that the Kangaroos should stay in Melbourne when someone as embedded in the club's history as former president and champion player Allen Aylett has declared his passionate support for the contrary view. But an issue of principle surely remains concerning the Kangaroos' supporters and their right to have a say in the club's destiny.

The AFL's strategy is based on market theory. Football clubs, as we know them, were not born of market theory. They were born of passion, commitment, community.

The Kangaroos have survived as long as they have precisely because these qualities were evident in their club — and by the word "club", we mean not only the players, the coaches and committees and boards they have had over the years, but also their supporters.

In no AFL club I have visited over the past two decades has there been a stronger sense that the supporters were part of the club than at the Kangaroos. Many worked as volunteers. The person who first explained this to me was then senior coach Denis Pagan, in the last years of his long reign there. North's biggest asset, he said, was its people.

If you respect the game, you respect the passion it evokes in the ordinary people who count themselves as supporters and followers. Either they have some rights in this matter or they don't. But if their opinions are of no consequence, football has altered radically.

I don't pretend this is a simple matter. Ron Barassi persuaded me that Australian football's best defence in the world of global entertainment was a national competition. I also acknowledge that had the Kangaroos moved to Canberra when that move was mooted in the 1980s, the national capital might now be an Australian football province and not a rugby league stronghold.

Nor, having seen the passing of the Fitzroy Football Club as an entity in its own right, do I have unambiguous feelings about that. There are still people who grieve for the old Fitzroy. But there are also former Fitzroy people who are reconciled to Brisbane.

But, with the Kangaroos, issues remain. The first is that there is no guarantee the Gold Coast move will work. What if after five years the Gold Coast Kangaroos are a vapid lot like the old Brisbane Bears? What will have been gained? What will have been lost is the proud, robust character of a club that has played a part in the lives of people for 140 years.

The AFL plan is a market projection. Its logic could just as easily apply to a plan to market sun shades or pool covers. But will it create a football club?

The NRL has created a number of these co-called franchises but there is a major difference between their code and ours. Rugby league survives on minimal live audiences and big TV ratings. I'm not sure that's a recipe for good health in our game.

Finally, there seems to be a presumption in all this that football followers are consumers — like people who go to the movies each Saturday afternoon. If that is true, the game has suddenly become a whole lot blander.

I do not know where the bulk of the opinion within the collective that is the North Melbourne Football Club lies on the subject of its proposed re-location. But if most are against it, my question is not why would you give the club 12 months to get its house in order and stay in its home town and place of choice. My question is — why wouldn't you? Doesn't it deserve that much support?