Australian football, also called Australian rules 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 association football. 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, 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 2009, it was the most watched sport on Australian television eclipsing the AFL nationally 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.
Sport is an important part of Australia that dates back to the early colonial period. Australian rules football, rugby league, rugby union, association football, cricket and tennis are among the earliest organised sports in Australia. Sport has shaped the Australian national identity through events such as the Australia vs USA basketball match in 2019 which attracted over 100,000 people, the Melbourne Cup and the America's Cup. Australia also holds the record for the largest attendance at a Rugby Union match with almost 110 000 watching the Wallabies play the All Blacks in 2000.
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 there 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. 120 years later in 1986 Queensland was the first state awarded a licence to have a club, the Brisbane Bears, in the national 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 is a football code within Australia with a history of organised competition 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.
Australian rules football in England is a team sport and spectator sport with a long history. 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 Tasmania, has been played since the late 1870s and draws the largest audience for a football code in the state.
Australian rules football in the Australian Capital Territory has been played continuously since 1911 and was the most popular football code in the nation's capital Canberra between 1978 and 1982. The current governing body is AFL NSW/ACT established in 1999.
Australian rules football in New South Wales dates back to 1866 with organised competition being continuous since the 1880s. Today several regions are strongholds of the sport, including Broken Hill near South Australia, and the Riverina and the South Coast near Victoria. In other, more populous areas of New South Wales, including Sydney, Australian football trails behind rugby league in popularity. The AFL NSW/ACT is the governing body of the sport across the state and the Australian Capital Territory.
Australian rules football in Western Australia (WA) is the most popular sport in the state and Western Australia has the second highest number of Australian rules football participants of any state.
Australian rules football in South Australia has long been the most popular sport in the state.
Australian rules football in Victoria is the most watched code of football. Victoria has more than double the number of Australian rules football players of any other state in Australia.
The "Barassi Line" is an imaginary line in Australia which approximately divides areas where Australian rules football is the most popular football code from those where rugby league and rugby union dominate. 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 dominant code on both sides of the line.
Rugby league football has been played and watched by people in the Australian state of Victoria since the early 20th century. While for most of its history there the game's popularity has been marginal due to the dominance of Australian rules football in Victoria, rugby league's popularity has rapidly increased in recent years in the state's capital of Melbourne. due mainly to the introduction of a professional Melbourne-based team in the national competition.
The AFL Under-19 Championships is an annual Australian national underage representative championship in 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).
Australian rules football culture is the cultural aspects surrounding the game of Australian rules football, particular to Australia and the areas where it is most popular. This article explores aspects and issues surrounding the game, as well as the players, and society. Australian Rules is a sport rich in tradition and Australian cultural references, especially surrounding the rituals of gameday for players, officials, and supporters.
The origins of Australian rules football date back to the late 1850s in Melbourne, the capital city of Victoria.
Rugby union in Victoria describes the sport of rugby union being played and watched in the state of Victoria in Australia. The code was first introduced some time between the 1850s and 1880s but remained a minor sport played primarily in the private schools and amongst interstate expats. This has changed, particularly since the professionalisation of the game in the mid 1990s.
