The proposed relocation of the North Melbourne Football Club has been an ongoing issue for both the club and the Australian Football League (AFL) since the 1980s. The North Melbourne Football Club has been involved in several proposals, especially during times of financial and on-field difficulty, to relocate and secure its future.
Relocation of Melbourne-based clubs has been an agenda for the AFL since the presidency of Allen Aylett in the early 1980s: due to the national expansion of the Victorian league (VFL) to become the AFL, it had a legacy of 10 of its 16 AFL clubs during the 1990s based in Victoria, which was seen as unsustainable over the longer term.
The AFL has consistently pushed for its Melbourne based clubs to relocate interstate, offering significant incentives.[1] North Melbourne has been a regular target of these offers due to financial and on-field pressures throughout the latter 20th and 21st century, and as such has been involved in interstate relocation or merger proposals similar to that of the Sydney Swans in 1982 or the Brisbane Lions in 1996.
For several proposals, most notably an AFL-supported relocation to the Gold Coast, Queensland in 2007, the issue has been put to a club member vote. Following the Kangaroos' rejection of the Gold Coast relocation offer – resulting in the admission of the Gold Coast Suns to the competition in 2011 – there was a push from the AFL for the Kangaroos to relocate to Tasmania in preference to awarding a license to a Tasmanian team, which ended when Tasmania received the 19th AFL license in 2023.
The club has rallied and strongly resisted all proposed relocation attempts.
- ^ "AUSTRALIAN FOOTBALL South's truce uneasy". The Canberra Times. Vol. 56, no. 16, 886. Australian Capital Territory, Australia. 20 December 1981. p. 17. Retrieved 2 May 2022 – via National Library of Australia.