Australia soccer team, 1922
playing against New Zealand, Wiki
Why did Australia, with its relatively small population, perform so well at team sports?
a] To create a distinct national identity in an area in which we could do very well! Victorious sports people often became national or even international heroes
b] Tolerable winters that encouraged outdoors sports
c] Sport enabled well-loved national values, like mateship, to be played out. Australians loudly demanded fair play; sports cheats were often chastised for being un-Australian.
a] To create a distinct national identity in an area in which we could do very well! Victorious sports people often became national or even international heroes
b] Tolerable winters that encouraged outdoors sports
c] Sport enabled well-loved national values, like mateship, to be played out. Australians loudly demanded fair play; sports cheats were often chastised for being un-Australian.
Soccer arrived in Australia with Britain immigrants in the 1870s, and the first formally organised club, The Wanderers, was founded in 1880 in Sydney. But it was not until 1911 that a governing body was formed to oversee soccer activities in the whole of Australia. Soccer never became the dominant sport in any Australian state, remaining the favoured sport only in large ethnic centres before after WW2.
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At first New South Wales Rugby Union started in Australia with the first club emerging in 1863 at Sydney University. And by the 1890s, clashes between colonial Rugby Union sides attracted thousands of fans paying to see games. But player discontent was spreading, with men needing payment for lost work-time and insurance for sporting injuries. Sadly Rugby’s strong amateur ethos meant no change happened.
Ditto Britain. Rugby became hugely popular in northern English industrial towns and
demands grew for players to be paid. When the Rugby Football Union refused to
allow professionalism in 1886 and 1893, northern rugby clubs met to found the Northern Union i.e League
Kangaroo Rugby League Team
National Australian Team, 1908
Rugby League, 1932
Australia Vs Britain
The early success of Rugby League depended on NSW player Herbert Dally Messenger. Approached by Sydney business man James Giltinan, trade unionist-Labour politician Henry Hoyle and champion cricketer Victor Trumper, Dally switched allegiance to League in 1907 and quickly emerged as the first superstar. Messenger’s first full season of Rugby league was played in 1908 when there were 9 clubs in Sydney. Then League spread north with the establishment of the Qld Rugby Association in 1909.
The ultimate clash between the two Rugby codes came before WW1. Returning from a successful tour of England, players from the Wallabies Australian Rugby Union side were invited to play against a representative League side, despite the threat of being banned from playing Union. Note the Wallabies’ leading players defected to League!
After struggling through its first two years of competition, Rugby League consolidated its position in 1910. Growing attendances at club games, inter-state and international fixtures reflected the game’s growing popularity and financial stability. An English side toured, followed by an Australasian tour of Britain in 1911–12.
The 15-man Union game was the only Rugby code offered to students in the Greater Public Schools of NSW, ever since they met at a decisive meeting in 1892 and decided to be Union-focused. After all Union was always a gentleman’s game. But more than that! The separation of Rugby codes between private and public schools clearly reflected NSW’s class and religious divide. In the early C20th, Rugby League administrators were associated with both the Labour Party and Catholicism - my spouse’s middle class Sydney school never allowed its boys to play a working-class sport.
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Australian Rules Football was organised into a competition in Victoria, and was codified in 1858 by the Australian Football League. And once inter-colonial football matches were being played by 1879, a national football governing body was needed. So with Rugby League being the code only in Qld and NSW, Australian Rules dominated all the other states and territories.
The Australian rules that developed did indeed come from Britain but became uniquely Australian by the later C19th. Sport and the National Imagination by Richard Cashman asked how sport affected the development of national consciousness in Australia? Rules reflected the uniqueness of Australian society because we were a large country with a small population. The nation had:
1] very large city footy fields compared to Rugby/soccer;
2] 18 players from each of the 2 teams on the ground together, so 36 players and 3 umpires; and
3] long game times (100 minutes plus time on). Australians wanted “Our Own Game”, so the existing rules of football had to be flexible, and reflective of Australian values.
3] long game times (100 minutes plus time on). Australians wanted “Our Own Game”, so the existing rules of football had to be flexible, and reflective of Australian values.
Fitzroy Australian Rules Club
in Melbourne, 1904
Spectacular mark/flying catch
Australian Rules Football, 1914
Australian Rules’ distinctive feature was the spectacular mark, high above the opposition players’ heads, allowing the marking player to run freely toward his own goal posts. Rugby games could never display such aerial elegance and soccer players couldn't use their hands. There was no offside rule; players could not score by carrying the ball between goal posts; umpires used a centre bounce to restart play after each goal; and goal umpires waved two flags to signal a goal and one flag to signal a behind/point.