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Australian rules football (also known as Aussie Rules) is a game played between two teams of 18 players, generally played on cricket ovals during the winter months. Developed in Melbourne, this football code has become the predominant winter sport in many parts of Australia.
Football competitions run approximately from March to August, with finals being held in September. Pre-season competitions usually begin in late February. Unlike most soccer competitions, there are no separate "league" and "cup" trophies. The teams that occupy the highest positions (usually four in most amateur leagues, but up to eight in the AFL) play off in a "semi-knockout" finals series (i.e. under most systems, the very highest-finishing teams usually get a second chance if they lose their first final), with the two successful teams meeting in the Grand Final.
The sport is the most popular winter sport in Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. In Queensland and New South Wales the main winter sports are rugby league and rugby union, although with the establishment of successful Australian Football League teams in Sydney and Brisbane, and hence the growth of amateur football in those areas, this is changing to some degree.
Football is generally not played competitively in the Australian summer. Cricket is the most common summer spectator sport in Australia, and is usually played on the same grounds as Aussie Rules. In the past, many elite-level footballers played representative cricket, but the increasingly professional nature of the game made this impossible by the 1980s. Many amateur players still play both.
The equipment needed to play the game is minimal. As in other kinds of football, players wear boots with stops (known as studs in some regions) in the soles, shorts, and a thick shirt or jumper known as a guernsey.
The game is played with a bouncy oval ball which may be caught, kicked or passed to another player by punching, but may not be thrown. A player may also run with the ball, provided they either bounce or touch the ball to the ground every 15 metres. A player who cleanly catches a kicked ball that has travelled more than 15 metres without anyone else touching it — called a mark — is entitled to an unimpeded kick of the ball, to advance his team towards their goalposts. Some of these are known as speckies.
Four posts are erected at either end of the oval and markings are placed on the ground as shown in the diagram below. The aim for each team is to kick the ball between either the two inner posts of one set, for a goal, worth six points. If the ball travels between one outer and one inner post, it scores a behind, worth just one point. (The standard starting player positions are shown in the diagram below, but they are not enforced by the rules of the game — players may locate themselves and move in any direction.)
The game is controlled by a number of field umpires (at elite level, three), two boundary umpires whose main job is to conduct throw-ins when the ball leaves the field of play and two goal umpires who judge whether the ball is kicked between the goal posts without being touched by another (thus scoring a goal), between a goal and point post (thus a point) or outside the goals entirely (thus becoming the boundary umpire's responsibility). The goal umpires wear distinctive uniforms (such as white coats) and are equipped with two flags. After a goal is scored and indicated to the players, the goal umpire waves the two flags such that the other goal umpire sees and records the goal. One flag is waved for a point.
| Australian rules football at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Alistair Lynch, (Brisbane Lions), is attempting to take a mark, with his Collingwood opponent trying to stop him. (Note: This photograph was taken during a match played as part of the AFL's annual "Heritage Round", a week in which teams wear guernseys (shirts) used by their club in previous generations.) |
The game is a fast-paced combination of speed, athleticism, skill and physical toughness. Players are allowed to tackle the player with the ball and impede opposition players from tackling their teammates, but not to deliberately strike an opponent (though pushing the margins of these rules is often a substantial part of the game). Like most team sports, tactics are based around trying to get the ball, then - through a combination of running with the ball, handballing/handpassing (punching the ball) and kicking - deliver it to a player who is within range of goal. Because taking a mark entitles the player to a free kick, a common tactic is to attempt to kick the ball on the full (without bouncing) to a teammate who is within kicking range of goal. In this situation, packs often form, and spectacular high marks (where players launch themselves off opponents' backs high in the air to mark the ball) are common.
Tom Wills began to devise the rules of the game in Melbourne, Victoria, in 1858, making Australian Rules — originally known as "Victorian Rules" — arguably the oldest officially codified form of football played today. (H.C.A. Harrison, Wills's cousin, was also named much later as an official "father of the game", but his role does not now seem to have been significant at this very early stage.) A letter by Wills was published in "Bell's Life in Victoria and Sporting Chronicle" on July 10, 1858, calling for a "foot-ball club" with a "code of laws" to keep cricketers fit during winter. An experimental match, played by Wills and others at the "Richmond Paddock" on July 31, 1858 may have been the first game of Australian Rules. However, few details of that game have survived.
On August 7, 1858 two significant events in the development of the game occurred: the Melbourne Football Club was founded, one of the world's first football clubs in any code, and a famous match between Melbourne Church of England Grammar School and Scotch College began, umpired by Wills. A second day of play took place on August 21, and a third and final day on September 4. The two schools have competed annually ever since. However, the rules used by these three famous teams in 1858 did not necessarily have much in common with Australian Rules Football.
The Melbourne Football Club rules of 1859 are the oldest surviving set of laws for Australian Rules. They were drawn up at the Parade Hotel, East Melbourne on May 17, by Wills, W. J. Hammersley, J. B. Thompson and Thomas Smith (some sources include H. C. A. Harrison). The 1859 rules did not include some elements which soon became important to the game, such as the requirement to bounce the ball while running, and Melbourne's game was not immediately adopted by neighbouring clubs. Before each match, the rules had to be agreed by the two teams involved. By 1866, however, several other clubs had agreed to play an updated version of Melbourne's rules.
It is often said that the founders were partly inspired by the ball games of the local Aboriginal people in western Victoria. Aborigines did play a sport called Marn Grook, which used a ball made out of possum hide, and included play resembling the high marking ("specky") in Australian Rules. There is considerable debate over the connection between the two. Wills did have a deep knowledge of Aboriginal culture, and Harrison had grown up in an area of Victoria near present day Moyston where he may have seen Marn Grook.
Wills had been educated at Rugby School in England and had also, like W. J. Hammersley and J. B. Thompson, been to the University of Cambridge. The Cambridge Rules, drawn up in 1843, included some elements which are important in Australian Rules, such as the mark. Thomas Smith was Irish and had attended Trinity College, Dublin, where the Rugby School rules were popular at a very early stage. These men would have been familiar with other public school and university "football" games. They may also have been inspired by traditional games, played among the thousands of immigrants who poured into Victoria from Britain, Ireland and many other countries, during the goldrushes of the 1850s.
While it is clear even to casual observers that Australian Rules is similar to Gaelic football, the exact relationship is unclear, as the Irish game was not codified until 1887. The historian B. W. O'Dwyer points out that Australian Rules has always been differentiated from rugby football by having no limitation on ball or player movement (in the absence of an offside rule), the need to bounce the ball (or toe-kick it, known as a solo in Gaelic football) while running, punching the ball rather than throwing it, and other traditions. As O'Dwyer says:
The modern day Australian Football League (AFL) has many teams dating back to the beginnings of the game: apart from the Melbourne Football Club, other early clubs still in existence include: Geelong (1860), Carlton (1864), North Melbourne (a.k.a. Hotham, now Kangaroos) (1869), Port Adelaide (1870), Essendon and St Kilda in (1873), South Melbourne (now Sydney Swans) (1874) and Footscray (now the Western Bulldogs) (1877).
In 1877, the Victorian Football Association, the game's first league, was formed by 12 clubs, most of them from the Victorian country: Albert Park, Ballarat, Barwon, Beechworth, Carlton, Castlemaine, Geelong, Hotham (later North Melbourne), Inglewood, Melbourne, Rochester and St Kilda.
Gradually the game spread from Victoria into other Australian colonies, especially South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia, all of which had strong, separate leagues by the 1890s, in particular the South Australian National Football League (SANFL) and the Western Australian Football League (WAFL). Meanwhile, a rift in the Victorian Football Association (VFA) led to the formation of the Victorian Football League (VFL), which commenced play in 1897 as an eight-team breakaway of the stronger clubs in the VFA competition: Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Fitzroy, Geelong, Melbourne, St Kilda and South Melbourne.
Another five VFA clubs joined the VFL later: Richmond and University joined the VFL in 1908, although University withdrew in 1915. Footscray, Hawthorn and North Melbourne joined in 1925, by which time VFL had become the most prominent league in the game.
For much of the 20th century the SANFL and the WAFL were considered peers of the VFL. Although the VFL was generally accepted as the strongest league, clubs from all three leagues frequently played each other on an even footing in challenge matches and occasional nationwide club competitions.
The various state leagues also selected teams for interstate matches. Because VFL clubs increasingly recruited the best players in other states, Victoria usually dominated these encounters. However, State of Origin rules were introduced in 1977, and in the first such game, at Subiaco Oval in Perth, Western Australia defeated Victoria, 23.13 (151) to 8.9 (57), a huge reversal of the results in most previous games between these states. Western Australia and South Australia began to win many of their games against Victoria. (For reasons which are still controversial, interstate games ceased in 1999.)
In a move which heralded big changes within the sport, one of the original VFL clubs, South Melbourne Football Club, relocated to the Rugby League stronghold of Sydney in 1982 and became known as the Sydney Swans. In the late 1980s, strong interstate interest in the VFL led to a more national competition; two more non-Victorian clubs, the West Coast Eagles and the Brisbane Bears began playing in 1987. The league changed its name to the Australian Football League (AFL) following the 1989 season. In 1991, it gained its first South Australian team, Adelaide. West Coast's local derby rivals Fremantle were admitted in 1995. Fitzroy merged with Brisbane in 1996 due to financial difficulties and the proud old SANFL club, Port Adelaide joined in 1997, immediately becoming fierce local rivals to Adelaide. The AFL, currently with 16 member clubs, is the sport's elite competition.
All of the clubs which have competed in the VFL or AFL still exist in one form or another. For example, the Fitzroy Football Club is represented in the Victorian Amateur Football Association by the Fitzroy Reds, who wear Fitzroy guernseys and play their home games at the old Brunswick Street Oval.
With the introduction of the AFL, the SANFL, WAFL and other state leagues rapidly declined to a secondary status. Apart from these there are many semi-professional and amateur leagues around Australia, where they play a very important role in the community, and particularly so in rural areas.
The VFA, still in existence a century after the original schism, merged with the former VFL reserves competition in 1998. The new entity, (somewhat confusingly) called itself the 'Victorian Football League'.
Even at the elite level, the game still retains some touches from its inter-suburban roots. Players run on to the field through a crepe paper banner depicting some message (for instance, congratulating players on a milestone number of games) constructed by volunteer supporter groups at the mostly member-owned clubs. All clubs have a team song, most composed in the 1940s or aping the musical style.
Occasionally, there is talk in the media of increasing the number of AFL teams from outside Victoria. The most likely new location is Tasmania, which currently fields a team in the VFL, the Tasmanian Devils Football Club. Other possible locations include Canberra, western Sydney, Darwin, the Gold Coast and north Queensland.
However, it is believed that new teams would be financially unviable, in smaller cities and/or away from strongholds of the game. Also, many people consider the competition would become unwieldy if more than 16 clubs took part. It is therefore unlikely that a new team would be admitted, unless two existing clubs merged or an existing club left the competition. Another possible change is the relocation of an existing club to one of the above locations.
In the meantime, some Victorian teams have adopted a second home ground. Hawthorn and St Kilda play two games a year each at York Park, Launceston and the Kangaroos play some games at Manuka Oval in Canberra. In 2004, the Western Bulldogs played a home game at Marrara Oval in Darwin.
While Australian Rules Football is a spectator sport only in Australia (except for occasional exhibition games staged in London for the large Australian expatriate community there), there has, since the late 1980s, been a growing international amateur competition in countries such as New Zealand, Ireland, Great Britain, Denmark, the USA, Canada, Germany, Japan, Papua New Guinea, Nauru, Samoa, China and South Africa, initially established by Australian expatriates but collecting growing numbers of native players.
A series of hybrid International Rules matches between Australia's best and a representative Gaelic football team from Ireland have been staged on an annual basis. The rules are a compromise between the two codes, using a round ball and a rectangular field but allowing the fierce tackling of the Australian code. The series have remained evenly matched with the Irish using speed and athleticism, and the Australians strength and power - both inherent skills in their respective codes. This contrast of skills has created exciting contests that have been a hit with spectators.
Several Irish gaelic footballers have been recruited to play in Australia, most notably Brownlow medallist Jim Stynes, Sean Wight, and more recently Tadhg Kennelly and Setanta Ó hAilpín.
There is an international administrative body for the sport that has been in existance since 1995: The International Australian Football Council (IAFC). It now boasts some thirty-odd national associations as members
The inaugural Australian Rules International Cup was held in Melbourne in 2002. It was contested by 11 teams made up exclusively of non-Australians: Ireland won the cup, defeating Papua New Guinea in the final.
For the centenary of the VFL/AFL in 1997, a Hall of Fame was formed. That year 136 Australian Rules identities were inducted, including 100 players, 10 coaches, 10 umpires, 10 administrators and 6 media representatives. "Legend of the Game" status was conferred on 12 players and another four in following years. Some commentators have suggested that the Hall is overly dominated by Victorians.
The original legends (in alphabetical order):
Later additions:
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