Southern Suburbs rugby league president Stephen Harris has known for a long time that an AFL presence in Gordonvale was inevitable.
From the Cairns District Rugby League club's ground at Alley Park he would look over to Gordonvale Primary School, where Auskick instructors were at work.
"They're so well organised and well funded," he said this week. "I knew it was only going to be a matter of time before they had a club here."
On Saturday Gordonvale's Maher Park will host its first senior open age game when the AFL Cairns Women's League brings round five of its pre-Christmas series to the venue.
It is a preview of next year, when Maher Park will be the home ground for AFL Cairns Women's League's newest team, Pyramid Power.
Power has been in the junior competition for five years and AFL Cairns football operations co-ordinator Sean Hunter sees there is room to grow.
"It is widely known there will continue to be growth in the southern corridor and the AFL will embrace this," he said.
Harris believes it is only a matter of time before Pyramid Power is represented in the Cairns AFL's senior men's competition.
"I think it's a good thing. I'm a fan of what they are doing in Gordonvale," he said.
"My concern is if they schedule two teams at the same time half the crowd will to to one, the other half will go to the other.
"But I think that Gordonvale will always be a rugby league town as long as Suburbs are playing well and they have a good team to support.
"Sometimes players will go and try AFL and they won't come back.
"We've to do a better job of retaining our players."
Harris believes the rugby league is getting better at supporting the grassroots but can still learn from AFL.
****(Saturday's games) 3.30pm: North Cairns v Centrals TB; 5pm: Manunda Hawks v South Cairns.
Last Modified on 06/11/2014 15:21