Devils’ SSP Gambit Shows Tasmania’s Patient Path to 2028
There was a small but telling piece of football administration out of Tasmania this week, the sort of story that rarely makes the back page but says a great deal about how the state’s new AFL entrant intends to build itself. The Devils have re-signed their best-and-fairest winner through to 2027, while simultaneously releasing him on a state-specific pathway arrangement to train with an established AFL club over summer in the hope of landing a senior contract elsewhere before his new home finally takes the field.
It is, on paper, an unusual piece of paperwork. In practice, it is exactly the kind of pragmatic thinking Tasmania will need if it is to avoid the mistakes of expansion clubs past.
What an SSP deal actually does
For readers unfamiliar with the mechanics, a state-specific pathway arrangement is essentially a holding pattern with benefits on both sides. The player remains contracted to his home state, in this case locked into Tasmania’s system through to 2027, but is permitted to train and trial with an established AFL club in the hope of earning a senior list spot before the Devils’ own licence begins. If he succeeds, he gets AFL football years earlier than Tasmania could otherwise offer him. If he does not, he returns to the fold with the benefit of elite-level conditioning and exposure behind him.
It is not a new concept in principle – the AFL has used similar arrangements for other emerging markets and underage talent over the years – but applying it to a reigning league best-and-fairest is a more significant commitment than ushering through a promising teenager. This is a proven senior performer the club believes in enough to tie down for the best part of three years, and talented enough to let walk out the door in the meantime.
Why this makes sense for Tasmania
The obvious criticism, and one I expect will surface in commentary over the coming days, is that Tasmania is effectively developing talent for someone else’s benefit. If the player in question earns a contract at his trial club, Tasmania will have spent resources on a footballer who may never kick a goal in Devils colours.
I would argue the opposite case is stronger. Tasmania does not play its first match until 2028. Every year between now and then is a year in which talented Tasmanian footballers, understandably, want senior football rather than reserves-grade patience. If the Devils insist on hoarding every contracted player until the licence begins, they risk losing their best talent to delisting, retirement from the elite pathway, or simple frustration. Better, surely, to let a player chase his opportunity elsewhere now, with the contractual safety net of a Tasmanian home locked in regardless of outcome.
There is also a recruitment dividend that should not be understated. If this best-and-fairest winner does land on an AFL list over summer, he becomes a walking advertisement for what Tasmania’s system produces. Every other talented Tasmanian watching from the sidelines sees a pathway that delivers actual AFL opportunity, not just a promise to be fulfilled at some distant future date. That is worth more to the Devils’ long-term list-building than one player’s immediate on-field contribution would have been.
The Commission’s quiet hand
It would be naive to view this purely as a club-level decision. Arrangements of this nature require sign-off well above list management level, and the AFL Commission has a direct interest in Tasmania’s pathway being seen to work. The licence was granted on terms that included substantial funding commitments and a defined build-up period, and the last thing the Commission wants in year two of that process is headlines about talented Tasmanians languishing or leaving the system altogether.
Facilitating an SSP arrangement for a best-and-fairest winner is a relatively low-cost way for the AFL to demonstrate good faith to a football community that has waited the best part of a century for a licence of its own, and which remains, not unreasonably, sensitive to any sign that the project is being treated as an afterthought. It also sends a signal to other prospective trial clubs that the AFL is comfortable facilitating these arrangements, which should make it easier for Tasmania to find landing spots for other players in a similar position over the next few years.
A test case for the broader pathway
What happens next matters beyond this one player. Tasmania’s entire development model between now and 2028 rests on a hybrid approach – its own underage and state league structures feeding talent, supplemented by arrangements exactly like this one that keep contracted players sharp and visible while the club itself is still finding its feet administratively and on-field. If this particular trial succeeds and the player secures a senior contract, expect the Devils to pursue similar deals for other contracted talent who find themselves ready for AFL football before the club is ready to offer it.
If it fails – if the player trains all summer and is not offered a list spot – the arrangement still has value. He returns to Tasmania battle-hardened, having trained at AFL intensity, and the Devils have lost nothing beyond a few months of his on-field service in a competition that, frankly, carries less weight than the development gained.
A measured step, not a grand statement
None of this will generate the sort of headlines that attach to marquee signings or draft concessions, and that is rather the point. Tasmania’s path to genuine competitiveness will not be built on a handful of dramatic gestures but on dozens of sensible, unglamorous administrative decisions exactly like this one – decisions that balance the club’s long-term interests against the immediate career needs of the footballers it is trying to keep onside.
As an Adelaide supporter who has watched my own club navigate the particular pressures of representing a smaller market within the AFL system, I have some sympathy for what Tasmania is attempting here. Expansion and entry into this competition is rarely a clean process, and the clubs that manage it best tend to be the ones willing to accept short-term compromises – like releasing your best-and-fairest winner to a rival state for a summer – in service of a longer-term vision. On the evidence of this deal, Tasmania’s administration appears to understand that distinction. Whether the player in question ends up walking out at a Devils home game in 2028 or wearing another club’s guernsey by then, the process by which that outcome is reached looks, to my eye, like sound governance rather than a club caught flat-footed by its own timeline.
