A State of Origin competition is a type of sporting event between players representing their state or territory, popularised by the rugby league State of Origin series. State of Origin began in Australian rules football on 8 October 1977 between Western Australia (WA) and Victoria, at Subiaco Oval in Perth, the initial brainchild of Leon Larkin. The selection criteria for Australian football have varied, but they are generally applied to players who have played most of their juniors games in a particular state or territory, hence the name "State of Origin". In Rugby league the criteria are different, where players are selected for where they either first played senior Rugby league or where they played in the majority of senior competitions. The annual rugby State of Origin series is one of Australia's most popular sporting events. The name is also used in Australia for small sporting events which generally involve domestic representative teams.
The New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL) is the governing body of rugby league in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory and is a member of the Australian Rugby League Commission. It was formed in Sydney on 8 August 1907 and was known as the New South Wales Rugby Football League (NSWRFL) until 1984. From 1908 to 1994, the NSWRL ran Sydney's, then New South Wales', and eventually Australia's top-level rugby league club competition from their headquarters on Phillip Street, Sydney. The organisation is responsible for administering the New South Wales rugby league team.
Laurie William Daley AM, also known by the nicknames of "Lozza" and "Loz", is an Australian professional rugby league football coach and a former player who played as a centre and five-eighth in the 1980s and 1990s.
The State of Origin series is an annual best-of-three rugby league matches between two Australian state representative sides, the New South Wales Blues and the Queensland Maroons.
Rugby league football in Australia has been one of the country's most popular sports since it started being played there in 1908. It is the dominant winter football code in the states of New South Wales and Queensland. In 2009, it was the most watched sport on Australian television eclipsing the AFL nationally for the first time with an aggregate audience of 128.5 million viewers. The elite club competition is the National Rugby League (NRL), which features ten teams from New South Wales, three teams from Queensland, and one team each from Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand.
Australian rules football matches between teams representing Australian colonies, states and territories have been held since 1879. For most of the 20th century, the absence of a national club competition and international matches meant that football games between state representative teams were regarded with great importance. Football historian John Devaney has argued that: "some of the state of origin contests which took place during the 1980s constituted arguably the finest expositions of the game ever seen".
The Shute Shield is a semi-professional rugby union competition in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is the premier grade club competition in NSW rugby. The Shute Shield is awarded at the end of the Sydney Club Rugby season to the team that wins the Grand Final.
Rugby union is a football code within Australia with a history dating back to 1864. Although traditionally most popular in Australia's rugby football strongholds of New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT, it is played throughout the nation.
Universal football was the name given to a proposed hybrid sport of Australian rules football and rugby league, proposed at different times between 1908 and 1933 as a potential national football code to be played throughout Australia. The game was trialled, but it was never otherwise played in any regular competition.
Australian rules football in the Australian Capital Territory has a history dating back to the formation of the territory in the 1910s.
Australian rules football has been played in New South Wales since the 1870s; however it has a chequered history in the state and has generally been overshadowed in popularity as a winter sport by the rugby football codes. Compared to rugby league, Australian football had a small presence in Sydney until the 1980s. The sport is popular elsewhere in the state, and has been the dominant code in the Riverina and Broken Hill. Its popularity is constantly increasing northward, across what is known as the Barassi Line.
The 1908 NSWRFL season was the inaugural season of the New South Wales Rugby Football League's premiership, Australia's first rugby league football club competition, in which nine clubs competed from April till August 1908. The season culminated in the first premiership final, for the Royal Agricultural Society Challenge Shield, which was contested by Eastern Suburbs and South Sydney. In 1908 the NSWRFL also assembled a New South Wales representative team for the first ever interstate series against Queensland, and towards the end of the season, the NSWRFL's leading players were absent, having been selected to go on the first Kangaroo tour of Great Britain.
The "Barassi Line" is an imaginary line in Australia which divides areas where Australian rules football is more popular than rugby league and rugby union and vice versa. It was first used by historian Ian Turner in his "1978 Ron Barassi Memorial Lecture". Crowd figures, media coverage, and participation rates are heavily skewed in favour of the code that is most dominant on either side of the line.
Patrick Yost Walsh was an Australian rules footballer who played with the Essendon Football Club in the VFL/AFL.
The 1908 Melbourne Carnival was the inaugural Australian National Football Carnival, an Australian rules football interstate competition, held in Melbourne in August 1908. It was known at the time as the Jubilee Australasian Football Carnival because it was designed to commemorate 50 years of Australian rules football.
The 1914 Sydney Carnival was the third edition of the Australian National Football Carnival, an Australian rules football interstate competition. It was held between Wednesday 5 August and Saturday 15 August 1914. Victoria was the winning state, going undefeated through the competition.
The 1927 Melbourne Carnival was the sixth Australian National Football Carnival: an Australian rules football interstate competition.
The North East Australian Football League (NEAFL) is an Australian rules football league in New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory. The league was formed in November 2010, and its inaugural competition was in 2011. It is a second division league, sitting below the national Australian Football League (AFL) and features the reserves teams of the region's four AFL clubs playing alongside six non-AFL affiliated NEAFL senior teams.
The 1931 Australia rugby union tour of New Zealand was a collection of rugby union games undertaken by the Australia team in New Zealand against invitational and national teams of New Zealand.
The 1883 Southern Rugby Union season was the 10th season of the Sydney Rugby Premiership. Twelve clubs competed from May till August 1883. The season culminated in the Premiership, which was won by Redfern. This was the first premiership in which the winner was awarded the Gardiner Cup. Redfern were crowned Premiers at a committee meeting of the Union.
