The men and women who make up the AFL Commission have a crucial meeting tomorrow. At this delicate stage of the competition's expansion, every commission meeting is crucial, but there is a genuine feeling of a lack of progress hanging over the push into southern Queensland and western Sydney.

The commission is expected to vote to lift the price of 2008 preliminary final and grand final tickets, but will not be involved in the internal debate over this year's topsy-turvy fixture.

My bet is that chief executive Andrew Demetriou will make the correct and final call on the 2009 draw and that every side will have played each other after round 15 next year, despite the AFL's constant claim that crowds and TV ratings support this year's deal-driven compromised competition.

No, the commission, which spent much of last season concentrating on West Coast's travails, will want some answers tomorrow and will hopefully be part of some big decisions — about infrastructure and struggling clubs and, more pertinently, where its two new babies will be baptised.

There still appears to be no clear picture, even at the top of the AFL tree, regarding just where the Gold Coast team or the second Sydney team will play.

Not a lot has gone right over the past month in terms of building momentum for the 17th and 18th teams and, to be blunt, the AFL is desperately in search of a big announcement.

The best it could dredge up over the past week was Andrew Demetriou's photo opportunity at Rooty Hill near Blacktown, where work has started on the second Sydney team's home training facility.

But even that is running behind schedule. In March this year, the hope was that an NAB pre-season game could take place at the new 10,000-seat stadium by early 2009; now, the completion date has been pushed back to closer to the middle of the season.

The Demetriou publicity stunt was reminiscent of Sir Kenneth Luke upending a pile of soil at Waverley in Melbourne's east in the 1960s. Meanwhile, the Blacktown City councillors remain vibrant cheerleaders for the team they hope to introduce in 2012, but that is nothing new.

In the past fortnight, the AFL has also lost its two prized Gold Coast recruits in potential chief executive Brian Cook and head coach Michael Voss - not a bad thing for the individuals concerned, who have made significant career and life choices in rejecting the fledgling team - but not good for the league's publicity machine.

The AFL reportedly has four choices before it regarding the vexed question of a Gold Coast home ground, but still to be endured next month is another home-and-away clash at the shabby Carrara - and another tangible and stark reminder to the folk of southern Queensland of the team that rejected it.

Demetriou reportedly landed in Blacktown because he was embarrassed by last Saturday's report in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald that the AFL was looking at a proposal to extend the Celtic brand into western Sydney and create a team largely represented by Gaelic footballers. The report was entirely correct, as Demetriou has said, but he - or more importantly, the zealous AFL NSW-ACT team - felt the report made the competition look desperate and was given too much prominence. Strange, that.

AFL chairman Mike Fitzpatrick confirmed the idea had merit and the AFL would explore it - how could the story not be considered newsworthy? Particularly when Demetriou himself broke into his holidays 18 months ago to hold talks with a Gaelic Players Association senior executive, who had himself produced a business plan to buy an AFL licence.

Still, it is true that the AFL is desperately searching for some love and an identity in the north-western suburbs of Sydney, which is a stronghold of the round-ball code, widely recognised as the world game. Do not discount the Irish connection completely. The AFL hasn't.

Despite its best efforts to make Tasmania and its bid for an AFL club disappear, that push will not go away and, in fact, continues to gain momentum. The AFL says Tasmania and its campaign is going nowhere, and yet the public loves the idea, as do key football identities and - it seems - perhaps even some significant corporates.

Either way, the campaign has only underlined how desperately one community wants a team, while another would struggle to recognise Barry Hall if he stood in the middle of peak-hour Parramatta Road.

The AFL's broadcast partners have not proven particularly supportive given the dreadful football ratings out of Sydney this season and the concerning downturn in Brisbane. Even Demetriou's favourite pressure group, the club presidents, have started to turn on the competition's bold strategy.

It is telling that Fitzpatrick made a point of telling at least one Victorian president how unimpressed he was by their public comments talking down the expansion and talking up the world financial crisis - a crisis it must be said that the AFL appears relatively well prepared for.

Not helping the cause are the struggling Victorian clubs, who on the one hand are winning multimillion-dollar government funding for new facilities while harbouring massive debts and in many cases falling further behind financially at Telstra Dome.

Richmond, North Melbourne, the Western Bulldogs and Melbourne all complete major sponsorship contracts this season and none are assured of backers for 2009.

So if the AFL Commission has become impatient with Demetriou and his executive in its push for a place in competitive new markets, the clubs and the football public have become restless and rebellious.

And the AFL will have to do better than shoving its boss into the middle of a construction site to win back momentum and give its bold and risky strategy some substance.