Australian rules football in Australia | |
---|---|
Country | Australia |
Governing body | Australian Football League |
National team(s) | Australia |
First played | 1858Melbourne, Victoria | in
Registered players | 555,629 (2023) [1] |
Clubs | 2,672 [2] |
National competitions | |
Club competitions | |
Audience records | |
Single match | 121,696 – Collingwood vs Carlton, at the MCG (1970 VFL Grand Final) |
Season | 7,238,858 – 2011 AFL season [3] |
Australian rules football (referred to simply as football or footy in all states except New South Wales and Queensland) is the most watched and attended sport and the second most participated code of football in Australia. Since originating in Victoria in 1858 and spreading elsewhere from 1866, it has been played continuously in every Australian state since 1903 plus the two major territories since 1916.
The sport is played by more than half a million Australians. Players participate at an organised level in various forms from Auskick (age 5) through to school-based, underage (up to age 19), open age, to Masters (35+) competition. It is the second largest code of football in Australia overall by number of participants after soccer. The season runs in most states and territories during the cooler seasons in Australia (from March to September), avoiding clashes with cricket, with the exception being the northern part of the Northern Territory where the season runs during the wet season (October to March). The highest participation rates (players per capita) can be found in the Northern Territory (5%), South Australia (4.8%), Victoria (4.3%), Western Australia (4.2%), Tasmania (3.3%) and the Australian Capital Territory (2.4%). Unlike other football codes which are strongest in urban areas, Australian rules football has the highest participation in regional and remote areas. Nationally this rate is 5.7%, almost double that of any other code. It is also fast growing in Queensland and New South Wales, though with participation rates of 1.3% and 1.1% respectively it is considered a minor sport, lagging behind soccer and rugby league in overall interest. These two states represent more than half of the Australian population and this dichotomy of football culture is referred to as the Barassi Line. South Australia is the only state where Australian rules is the code of football with the greatest number of participants.
Australian rules football holds the match attendance record of any football code in Victoria (121,696), South Australia (66,987) Tasmania (24,968) and the Northern Territory (17,500).
The national professional competitions are the Australian Football League (men's) and AFL Women's. These are the most popular professional football competitions of any code, with millions of TV viewers across the country. The AFL governs the code nationally through the AFL Commission. The AFL originated in Victoria and changed its name from Victorian Football League in 1990 after a successful program of national expansion.
While the AFL phased out state and territory representative matches as it expanded nationally (with the exception of occasional matches featuring Victoria), players can still represent their states up to the age of 19 through the AFL Under 16 Championships and AFL Under 19 Championships or through their lower tier (semi-professional) state competitions.
Australia competes internationally mainly against New Zealand. Australia's national teams remain undefeated. From 2007 to 2019 the underage men's team competed annually against international opponents as the AFL Academy. Australia has fielded amateur teams against South Africa, Papua New Guinea and the United States. Sides representing Indigenous Australia have competed against Papua New Guinea and South Africa.
It began in the Colony of Victoria in 1858, followed by the Colony of Queensland (1866) [4] and Colony of New South Wales (1866); Colony of South Australia (1877); Colony of Tasmania (1879); and, Colony of Western Australia (1881).
The first intercolonial representative match was Victoria vs South Australia (1879).
Delegates representing the football associations of South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Queensland met in 1883 in order to standardise the rules across the colonies. The earliest governing body, the Australasian Football Council (later Australian National Football Council) dates back to this time.
Following a hiatus in Queensland (1892-1903) and New South Wales (1893-1903) it was revived after the Federation of Australia and expanded to the territories of the Australian Capital Territory (1911) and the Northern Territory (1916).
The sport has had a significant impact on popular culture in its native Australia, capturing the imagination of Australian film, art, music, television and literature.
Football is the most highly attended spectator sport in Australia. Government figures show that more than 2.5 million people (16.8% of the population) attended games in 1999. [5] In 2005, a cumulative 6,283,788 people attended Australian Football League (AFL) premiership matches, a record for the competition. [6] A further 307,181 attended NAB Cup pre-season matches and 117,552 attended Regional Challenge pre-season practice matches around the country. [7] As of 2010, the AFL is one of only five professional sports leagues with an average attendance of over 30,000 per game.
As well as the AFL attendances, strong semi-professional state and local competitions also draw crowds. The South Australian SANFL drew an attendance in 2008 of 362,209 with an average of 3,773 per game, while the Western Australian WAFL drew an attendance of 219,205 with an average of 2,332 per game.
Region/State/Territory | Average AFL premiership season attendance (since 1990 as at 2023) [8] |
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New South Wales | 24,207 |
Victoria | 38,116 |
Queensland | 19,658 |
Western Australia | 34,462 |
South Australia | 35,919 |
Tasmania | 14,206 |
Australian Capital Territory | 10,989 |
Northern Territory | 9,320 |
According to OzTAM, in recent years, the AFL Grand Final has reached the top five programs across the five biggest cities in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. Australian rules football has achieved a #1 rating in the sports category in both 2004 and 2005.
Region/State/Territory | Registered players 2016 [9] | Registered players in 2023 [10] |
---|---|---|
National | 496,829 | 555,629 |
New South Wales | 51,177 | 71,481 |
Victoria | 209,117 | 235,970 |
Queensland | 47,274 | 68,354 |
Western Australia | 82,701 | 95,407 |
South Australia | 74,806 | 69,868 |
Tasmania | 15,732 | 14,528 |
Australian Capital Territory | 7,504 | 8,326 |
Northern Territory | 8,519 | 9,743 |
The most powerful organisation and competition within the game is the elite professional Australian Football League (AFL). The AFL is recognised by the Australian Sports Commission as being the National Sporting Organisation for Australian rules football. There are also seven state/territory-based organisations in Australia, most of which are affiliated to the AFL. Most of these hold annual semi-professional club competitions while the others oversee more than one league. Local semi-professional or amateur organizations and competitions are affiliated to their state leagues.
The last senior national carnival was held in 1993 and the last match between interstate senior sides was held in 1999. Senior interstate competition is no longer contested by players from the Australian Football League. A one-off exhibition match featuring Victoria and a "dream team". However, the state leagues continue to compete in inter-league matches.
The AFL Under 18 Championships are the annual national Australian rules football championships for players aged 18 years or younger and includes teams from each Australian state or Territory. The competition is monitored by AFL recruiters and frequently seen as the second biggest pathway for junior players to the fully professional Australian Football League. The competition is currently sponsored by the National Australia Bank (NAB). The competition receives an increasing amount of coverage in the media, however still lags behind the TAC Cup in terms of interest in Victoria.
AFL player states of origin based on junior participation.
Region/State/Territory | AFL Players (2019) |
---|---|
New South Wales | 47 |
Victoria | 483 |
Queensland | 33 |
Western Australia | 101 |
South Australia | 101 |
Tasmania | 23 |
Australian Capital Territory | 4 |
Northern Territory | 10 |
Australian rules football, also called Australian football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by kicking the oval ball between the central goal posts, or between a central and outer post.
Football in Australia refers to numerous codes which each have major shares of the mainstream sports market, media, broadcasting, professional athletes, financial performance and grassroots participation: Australian rules football, rugby league, rugby union and soccer. There are four pre-eminent professional football competitions played in Australia: the Australian Football League, the National Rugby League, Super Rugby and the A-League (soccer). By most measures, including attendance, television audience and media presence across the most states, Australian football is the most popular nationally. However, in the states of New South Wales and Queensland, rugby football is overall the most watched and receives the most media coverage, especially the Rugby League State of Origin contested between the two states referred to as "Australian sport's greatest rivalry". In recent times, there has been an increase in popularity in Australian football and corresponding decrease in popularity of Rugby union in New South Wales and Queensland. Soccer, while extending its lead in participation rate, particularly in the large cities, and improving its performance at the FIFA World Cup and at the FIFA Women's World Cup, continues to attract the overall lowest attendance, as well as media and public interest, of the four codes.
Rugby league in Australia has been one of Australia'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 2022, it was the most watched sport on Australian television with an aggregate audience of 137.3 million viewers. The premier club competition is the National Rugby League (NRL), which features ten teams from New South Wales, four teams from Queensland, and one team each from Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand. The premier representative competition is the annual Rugby league State of Origin featuring two sides, the New South Wales Blues and the Queensland Maroons is often referred to as "Australian sport's greatest rivalry", it is one of Australia's premier sporting events, attracting huge interest and television audiences.
Representative matches in Australian rules football are matches between representative teams played under the Australian rules, most notably of the colonies and later Australian states and territories that have been held since 1879.
For most of the 20th century, the absence of a national club competition in Australia and international matches meant that intercolonial and later interstate matches were regarded with great importance.
Auskick is a program designed to teach the basic skills of Australian football to children aged between 5 and 12. Auskick is a non-contact variant of the sport. It began in Australia and is now a nationwide non-selective program. It has increased participation and diversity in the sport amongst children, and is now being run in many countries across the world.
The Geography of Australian rules football describes the sport of Australian rules football played in more than 60 countries around the world. By 2017 more than 26 nations had contested the Australian Football International Cup, the highest level of worldwide competition.
Australian rules football in Queensland was the first official football code played in 1866. The Colony of Queensland was the second after Victoria to adopt Australian rules football, just days after the rules were widely published. For two decades it was the most popular football code, however a strong desire for representative football success saw Queenslanders favour British football variants for more than a century. As a result, Queensland is one of the two states to the east of the Australian cultural divide described as the Barassi Line. 120 years later in 1986 Queensland was the first state awarded a licence to have a club, the Brisbane Bears, in the national (AFL) competition, also its first privately owned club. However the Gold Coast based Bears had a detrimental effect until the 1993 redevelopment of the Brisbane Cricket Ground (Gabba). In contrast the Bears transformation into a Brisbane and traditional membership based club resulted in enormous growth, and a tripling of average AFL attendances by 1996.
Women's Australian rules football, is the female-only form of Australian rules football, generally with some modification to the laws of the game.
Rugby union in Australia has a history of organised competition dating back to the late 1860s. Although traditionally most popular in Australia's rugby football strongholds of New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT, it is played throughout the nation.
Australian rules football in England is a team sport and spectator sport with a long history. It is home to the longest running Australian rules fixture outside Australia, the match between Oxford and Cambridge Universities which has been contested annually since 1923. The current competitions originated in 1989 and have grown to a number of local and regional leagues coordinated by AFL England. In 2018, these regional divisions were the AFL London, AFL Central & Northern England and Southern England AFL.
Australian rules football in South Africa is a team sport played at amateur level in the country with a small audience. The governing body is AFL South Africa.
Australian rules football in Tasmania, has been played since the late 1870s and draws the largest audience for a football code in the state.
Australian Football in the Northern Territory is the most popular sport, particularly with indigenous Australian communities in Darwin, Alice Springs and the Tiwi Islands. It is governed by AFL Northern Territory.
Australian rules football in New South Wales is a team sport played and observed in the Australian state. It dates back to the colonial era in 1866, with organised competitions being continuous since the 1880s. Today, it is popular in several regions of the state, including areas near the Victorian and South Australian borders—Riverina, Broken Hill, and South Coast. These areas form part of an Australian cultural divide described as the Barassi Line. To the east of the line, it is known as "AFL", named after the elite Australian Football League competition. AFL NSW/ACT is the main development body, and includes the Australian Capital Territory.
Australian rules football in Western Australia (WA) is the most popular sport in the state. It is governed by the West Australian Football Commission (WAFC).
Australian rules football in Victoria is the most watched and second most participated code of football. Australian rules football originated in Melbourne in the late 1850s and grew quickly to dominate the sport, which it continues to. Victoria has more than double the number of players of any other state in Australia accounting for approximately 42% of all Australian players in 2023 and continues to grow strongly. Only Soccer in Victoria has more football participants, though the code's growth in Victoria has made up much ground lost to that code over previous decades such that they have now a similar number of players. The sport is governed by AFL Victoria based in Melbourne. The national governing body, the AFL Commission is also based in Melbourne.
The Barassi Line is an imaginary line in Australia which approximately divides areas where Australian rules football or rugby league is the most popular football code. The term 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 dominant code on both sides.
Australian rules football in Oceania is the sport of Australian rules football as it is watched and played in the Oceanian continent. The regional governing and development body is AFL South Pacific it is affiliated to the AFL Commission and was formed in 2008.
The AFL National Championships is an annual Australian national underage representative Australian rules football tournament. It is seen as one of the main pathways towards being drafted into a team in the fully professional Australian Football League (AFL).
Variations of Australian rules football are games or activities based on or similar to the game of Australian rules football, in which the player uses common Australian rules football skills. They range in player numbers from 2 up to the minimum 38 required for a full Australian rules football.
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