THE WEEK just gone was a timely one for Tasmania's Minister for Economic Development and Tourism, Paula Wriedt, to announce the next stage of her state's bid for a team in the AFL.

The island's sometimes fragmented football community was still flushed from celebrating its rich history the previous Friday night at its annual Hall of Fame dinner. As a regular attendee, I can report from direct experience what a heart-and-soul event this is.

Many of those honoured this year were of Tasmania's golden era, which only served to underline how far the game has fallen on the island and how much its football public has lost in the decades that have followed.

Most significant of all was the induction, as a "Legendary Team", of the 1958 state side. Arguably Tasmania's greatest ever, this was the team that beat both Western Australia and South Australia at the centenary carnival in Melbourne. What snapshot of history could more clearly represent the rise and fall of one state's football endeavours?

In 1958, when football was vibrant in Tasmania, champion players were virtually falling out of trees like ripe apples. The 1958 team boasted four home-grown All-Australians, as well as Arthur Hodgson, who played for Tasmania and Victoria at five carnivals, and other Tasmanian champions such as Neil Conlan (father of ex-Fitzroy Lion Michael), Brian Eade (father of Rodney), Rex Garwood (regarded as perhaps the state's greatest all-round sportsman) and Trevor Leo. Throw in former VFL stars Stuart Spencer and Jim Ross, both All-Australians, and this was a mighty outfit.

Ross was also elevated on the night to Legend status. He must have been a magnificent player. Although he played his last game for St Kilda before his 27th birthday, Ross won the club's best-and-fairest award three times. He says with humour, but obvious feeling, that he was denied a fourth win, in 1954, by administrative resentment over his hard bargaining for a better deal from the club.

Bearing in mind that only Nick Riewoldt, Robert Harvey and Bill Cubbins have won the award four times, had Ross not left for Tasmania in the prime of his football life, he may have established a record that would stand today.

A story of Jim Ross' calibre was told on the night by Trevor Leo, who is as articulate and thoughtful a presence as Tasmanian football has produced. Leo spoke of that 1958 match against Western Australia, describing how, in the opening quarter, Polly Farmer and Jack Clarke dominated the ruck for WA and consistently gave brilliant midfielders John Todd and Ray Sorrell first use of the ball.

At quarter-time, Tasmania's captain-coach, John Leedham, gave Ross the huge task of taking on Farmer and Clarke, while Leedham and Leo picked up Todd and Sorrell. So effective was Ross that Tasmania had 11 scoring shots to their opponent's two in the second term and gained control of the match. Ross would be honoured with All-Australian selection at the end of the carnival.

Trevor Leo, a former leading educationalist and education administrator, was, to my knowledge, the first person to publicly express the view that Tasmania's hope of football salvation lay in it gaining entry to what, then, was still the VFL.

I heard him say it in 1975. He told me last Friday night that he had first expressed that opinion in a newspaper column in 1970.

Almost 40 years on, the struggle continues. Tasmanian football has been rendered a basketcase and still the administration of the code's elite competition shows no interest in the only course that would once again give it life.

The conventional wisdom relating to Tasmania's bid for AFL inclusion is that no matter how worthy a submission it mounts after the Gemba group has completed its study of the state's capacity, the AFL will knock it back. Within the grand ambition to take the game to the Gold Coast and western Sydney, there is no room for the underdog, albeit one that is football to its bootstraps.

What is overlooked in this kind of thinking is that there is a grander ambition than that for economic expansion: it's the ambition for fairness. When in 2001, former Tasmanian premier, the late Jim Bacon, was negotiating to have some AFL matches played in Tasmania, an inevitable issue to be faced was where the games would be played.

It's said that Bacon brought a simple philosophy to bear, stating that the fan in Smithton (a small farming centre in the far north-west) was just as important as the fan in Sandy Bay (the most affluent suburb of Hobart, the state capital). The matches would be played in Launceston, roughly equidistant between those two centres.

Within today's football politics, it seems there is no place for such virtuous sentiment.

The supporters of western Sydney and the Gold Coast, no matter the serious doubt about their number or depth of passion, are considered more important than those in Tasmania, where there is absolutely no question about commitment.

Some supporters, it seems, are more equal than others.