FOOTBALL

Australian rules football around the world

Australian rules football is a sport played in countries around the world. In 2006, about 16,000 people played in structured competitions outside of Australia and at least 20 leagues that are recognised by the game's governing body, exist outside of Australia.[1]. This figure had grown to a total of 34,845 participation by the end of 2007.[2] In contrast, there are over 600,000 players in Australia where the game is at its strongest and overseas players make up less than 2% of the total players worldwide. Although semi-professional players have come from outside of Australia, and there have been several players in the VFL/AFL who have were born ouside Australia, no player to learn the game overseas has yet played a game in the Australian Football League.
The growth of Australian rules in the 19th Century and early 20th Century was rapid, but it went into rapid decline following World War I. After World War II, the sport experienced a small amount of growth in the Pacific region, particularly in Nauru, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand.
Australian rules football is emerging as an international sport much later than other forms of football such as soccer or rugby, but has grown substantially as an amateur sport in some countries since the 1980s. Initially the sport has grown with the Australian diaspora, aided by multiculturalism and assisted by exhibition matches and players who have converted to and from other football codes. In Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States there are many thousands of players and these countries. Canada, Japan, Denmark and Sweden have also shown strong potential in the sport amongst local players in the lead up to the 2008 Australian Football International Cup.
The AFL became the defacto governing body when it pushed for the closure of the International Australian Football Council in 2002.
Australian rules football is played professionally only by men in Australia and is major spectator sport only in Australia, with the exception of occasional exhibition games staged in other countries and carnival type events overseas.
Although the game is played in many countries, Australian Football League as world governing body only has 13 affiliated international governing bodies, AFL Canada, Danish Australian Football League, BARFL, AFL Japan, ARFLI, Nauru Australian Football Association, New Zealand AFL, USAFL, AFL South Africa, AFL PNG, AFL Samoa, Tonga Australian Football Association and AFL Germany, although the league has working relationships with bodies in additional countries who may form affiliation agreements in future and have sent (or may in future send) teams to the International Cup.

Early beginnings

Almost as soon as the game was becoming established in Australia, it had spread to New Zealand and South Africa, initially due to the Otago Gold Rush and Witwatersrand Gold Rush. The game was further fuelled in South Africa by Australian soldiers in the First and Second Boer Wars.
There were reports of early competitions in England, Scotland and also Japan, started by expatriate Australians and servicemen.

The First World Governing Body and International Competition

In New Zealand, where proximity to Australia saw a formidable league, quickly grew to a formidable 115 clubs by the turn of the 19th Century. As the game spread, it became known as Australasian Football, with delegates from New Zealand added to the newly formed Australasian Football Council.
In 1908, New Zealand defeated both New South Wales and Queensland at the Jubilee Australasian Football Carnival, an event held to celebrate 50 years of Australian Football.

Decline & hiatus

World War I saw the game being played by Australian servicemen around the world, particularly in Egypt and in Europe in France, Belgium and England.
Following the war, the game went into a sharp decline outside of Australia, with all domestic competitions dying out. National teams and international competition in the sport were non-existent for three quarters of a 20th Century. The return of many Australian expatriates from overseas goldfields and tours of duty combined with Australia's low profile on the world stage offered few opportunities for the game to grow during this time. With the withdrawal of its New Zealand delegates, the sport returned to the title of Australian Football, governed by the Australian Football Council. Concerned primarily with the growth of their own domestic competitions, the Australian leagues and governing bodies made little effort to develop or promote the game until the 1950s, and the council's role was mainly to oversee the growing importance of interstate test matches.
Nevertheless, the longest running fixture outside of Australia, the annual Oxford University versus Cambridge University match in England has been held since 1921 and has emerged into a fierce rivalry, and worthy of half-blue status at Oxford.[3] Apart from this match, however the game was rarely played in England.

Return of Oceania football

The only overseas place where the sport has been continuously played is the former Australian trustee mandate of Nauru, which began both senior and junior local competitions in the 1930s. The sport was also introduced Territory of New Guinea in 1944 and the Territory of Papua in 1948.
World War II saw some servicemen play the game overseas, particularly in Asia in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia and Africa in Egypt and Algeria. During the Vietnam War, matches were even played by servicemen against the local Vietnamese.
In the 1960s, Australian leagues began to show some interest in expansion of the game outside of Australia. 1963 saw the first Australian rules football exhibition matches played in the United States. Australian state leagues began occasionally promoting themselves in this way throughout the following decades.
In 1967, it was reported in the VFL Record's "Footy Facts" column that Australian football clubs existed in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town and that the VFL was optimistic about the future of the game in South Africa.[4] Little is known of how or when these clubs had formed or what later became of them.
Since 1967 there have been many matches between Australian and Irish teams, under various sets of hybrid, compromise rules. In 1984, the first official representative matches of International rules football were played, and these were played annually each October until 2006.
New Zealand resumed a local competition in 1974.
By 1975, Papua New Guinea had gained peaceful independence and test matches began to be played against teams from Australia. The first ever full international match involving Australia was played in 1977 at under 17 level between Australia and Papua New Guinea in Adelaide, with Australia taking the honours.[5] Since then, Australia have been peerless in the sport and seldom compete at international level.
Despite these small advancements to the international aspects of the game, progress overseas was rarely covered in the Australian media.

[edit] Modern era - The game begins abroad
In the late 1980s, successful VFL exhibition matches attracted large crowds and spawned fledgeling local competitions in both Japan and Canada. The Australian media showed only a token interest in the matches in London and Japan involving VFL clubs. It was during this decade that the sport was first televised in North America and the United Kingdom.

Game Spreads

The largest barriers to growth of Australian rules football internationally have traditionally been distance, field availability and player numbers. With a total of at least 36 player required for a game and a cricket sized pitch, this made it difficult for organisers in countries where space was a premium, enclosed grounds were not available and attracting participants would prove difficult. While these factors were not a problem in Papua New Guinea or New Zealand, they did pose large problems to leagues in Europe, Asia and America. The more inventive of organisers began to accept modified versions of the game, such as 9-a-side, often played on any available field, open space, parks, soccer or rugby fields. These approaches to the game were highly successful.
In the late 1980s, as these factors became less of an obstacle, amateur leagues were established in Japan (1987), England, Denmark and Canada (1989). In the case of Japan and Canada, these were directly sparked by VFL exhibition matches.
In the 1990s, the Australian diaspora had spread and amateur competition has grown in countries such as Sweden (1993), Germany (1995), USA (1996), Argentina, Spain and Samoa (1997), South Africa (1998), as well as a number of solely expatriate teams, mainly based in South East Asia.
During this time, the VFL had expanded to become the AFL and in turn commanded a greater national and international audience. Word of the sport grew out of AFL exhibition matches, cult television following and Internet communication. North American fans formed an organization, AFANA, specifically to work for improved media coverage of Australian football.
The traditionalists in the governing bodies of Australia (which became the AFL) were reluctant to sanction any games which were not played exactly according to the Laws of the Game, and the AFL initially did not recognise leagues which played the game on fields that did not closely match the proper dimensions or had less than 16 players per side.
Since the 1990s, these attitudes have changed somewhat and the AFL and other development bodies have directly contributed to the development the game overseas.

Formation of a World Governing Body and International Competition

The International Australian Football Council (IAFC) was formed after football first featured at the Arafura Games in 1995.
Since 1998, the Barassi International Australian Football Youth Tournament, endorsed by the AFL as part of its International Policy, has hosted several junior teams from other countries.
Since 2000, fledgeling competitions have been established in countries such as Ireland (2000), Tonga (2002), Scotland, France and China (2005).
Television and the Internet have since helped to increase the awareness of the game outside of Australia.
Inspired by successful Arafura Games competitions, the inaugural Australian Football International Cup was held in Melbourne in 2002, an initiative of the IAFC and the AFL. The first International Cup also marked the beginnings of a very small media interest in the international aspects of the game in Australia.
At the 2002 International Cup, meetings held between the AFL, IAFC and international teams at the International Cup saw the AFL become the de facto world governing body for the sport, with the leagues linked to the teams affiliating with the AFL. Some of the members of the IAFC disputed this move and continued the organisation in name. This organisation was finally completely dissolved in 2005, dropping all public claims to being the world governing body for the sport and being replaced by the development organisation Aussie Rules International.

Leaders of the Pack & Increasing Growth

In recent years, the game has grown particularly strongly also in Papua New Guinea and New Zealand where local player numbers are booming. In overall percentage terms their increases are high in comparison to the overall growth of the sport in Australia, however their total player numbers are at least 200 times less, making senior competition involving Australia at open level unlikely until at least 2020.
In 2005, after 8 years of growing domestic competition, the South African government declared Australian Rules Football the sport for "the new South Africa", injecting government funding into the sport.[6]
In 2006, Pakistan, Indonesia, Catalonia, Croatia, Norway, Bermuda and East Timor joined the list of playing nations with local players participating.
On July 3, 2006 the AFL announced that it had formed an International Development Committee to support overseas leagues. The AFL hopes to develop the game in other countries to the point where Australian football is played at an international level by top-quality sides from around the world. The AFL plans to host the International Cup regularly every four years, beginning in 2008, the 150th anniversary of the code.[7] Following the AFL's interest in the internationalisation of the game, coverage in the Australian media grew substantially.
On April 14, 2007, Australia's AIS Under 17 squad competed against the South African national Australian rules football team in the historic first international match between the two countries at North West Cricket Stadium in Potchefstroom, South Africa.[8] In the same month, a massive junior program called "Footy Wild", similar to Auskick was launched in the country

International competition

The first truly international competitor in Australian rules was New Zealand. In 1908 the Jubilee Australasian Football Carnival was held to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Australian rules football. New Zealand (then representing a total of 115 clubs) defeated both New South Wales and Queensland in the carnival but lost to Victoria and Tasmania.
The Arafura Games, held in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia (a competition for northern Australia, South East Asia and Pacific Islands) were the first International games to have Australian football as a competition sport, rather than a demonstration sport in 1995. Papua New Guinea won the Gold medal and retained it in subsequent games. Other teams that have competed at Australian Rules in the games include Japan, Nauru and a Northern Territory indigenous team. The International Australian football Council (IAFC) was formed after the 1995 Games (source IAFC).
Inspired by successful Arafura Games competitions, the inaugural Australian Football International Cup was held in Melbourne in 2002, an initiative of the newly formed IAFC. The 2002 cup was contested by 11 teams from around the world made up exclusively of non-Australians. Ireland won the 2002 cup, defeating Papua New Guinea in the final.
In the interim years, Japan and New Zealand played an annual game as a curtain raiser to an AFL game: the New Zealand national team were victorious by 100 points in 2003, and so in 2004, a club side from Auckland played the game, which Japan lost by two points. The amateur Australian Convicts also toured and played several matches against sides from developing nations.
The second Australian football International Cup was held in Melbourne in 2005, under the direction of the guidance and funding of the AFL with New Zealand defeating Papua New Guinea in the final, with third place going to the United States of America.
The third Australian Football International Cup will be held in Melbourne in 2008.
In 2006 Denmark, Sweden and Germany competed in a tri-nations series, which will be repeted annually.
Other international competitions that include Australian ex-patriates are also held, including the EU Cup, which was first held in 2005 in London, featuring 10 teams. In 2007 was held in Hamburg with 12 teams.