Yes the Ballarat chestnut, it has the three points of view, those that are all for it, those who are rigorously against it and the usual ignorant and apathetic- "the I don't know and I don't care" brigade.

Ballarat had been after an AFL presence in their city for years. Ballarat has the third biggest population in Victoria, following Melbourne and Geelong. They are not far ahead of Bendigo which is the 4^th largest. 

They were courting North Melbourne years ago to play there, but due to a combination of reasons- (one being that North were apparently "asleep at the wheel") so the Western Bulldogs administration in 2016 managed to cut a deal and grasped it from them. 

Ballarat have shown some ability in clever marketing. When the Adelaide Crows began to make the AFL finals from 1993 onwards Ballarat declared themselves a "Crow Friendly City" and welcomed them into their town as the Adelaide fans flooded into Melbourne. They were encouraged to stop there in Ballarat this would later amount to providing areas for the Adelaide contingent to camp overnight in Ballarat itself before, after (or both) the games they would come to Melbourne for. 

  Now this is the main point about the Ballarat scenario- it is not really that they specifically want the Western Bulldogs or North Melbourne playing there, it is more about the opposition that will play against the Bulldogs or Kangaroos. The two teams they want most are the Adelaide Crows and Port Adelaide for the South Australian invasion. Fair enough why not they help the Ballarat economy, why wouldn't they? 

Anyhow Ballarat give money to the Western Bulldogs to play a few home game there each season, a few do travel up from Melbourne to watch them play there, along with a few locals who want to see games played at the highest level . So, it is a mutually exploitive deal,  Ballarat want the tourist dollar from the out of towner, the Bulldogs are hoping to widen their supporter base by latching onto those from Ballarat.

The problem is this- how far do you want to expand to bring more supporters to the club? The club changed the name to Western because it was going to bring in more fans- the name Footscray (apparently) meant nothing to those in the Western Suburbs out of Footscray. Yet it hasn't happened, we still have the 2^nd smallest supporter base in Victoria (North Melbourne have the smallest) so the idea of we want to cosy up to Ballarat to widen our brand is just laughable to those of us who knew that changing the name from Footscray to Westen was never going to pay dividends. People in Ballarat who already follow a club are hardly going to change to us because we are Western playing two games a season there for money.  

We seem to have this fascination with directions in Melbourne especially west.  Everything in Footscray needs to be changed to Western. The Western General Hospital, was formerly the Footscray and District Hospital, the local football league was the Footscray District Football League- then after Footscray became the Western Bulldogs it changed to the Western Region Football League. There are other examples as well.  

However Ballarat don't consider themselves as "Western Suburbs" they are their own town- they are not "westies" they are Ballarat a famous old place where the Eureka Stockade occurred in 1854- nearly 170 years ago, before Aussie Rules football was invented. 

Calling football clubs after any of the 4 cardinal directions (north, south, east and west) is pointless- especially when there is no place after or before it. West Tigers- what does that mean? West Coast Eagles they have a ludicrous name- would someone from Kalgoorlie feel invested in that? Then at least that was their name from inception in 1986 for their first season in 1987, we changed from a real name to a directional name.    

The fight to change the name back to Footscray continues, it has its lulls and is usually dormant however it is still there- it hasn't gone away. The will to continue it will strengthen soon