History Of The Australian Game

The Australian Football League (AFL) is Australia's most popular and successful professional sporting league. It consists of 16 teams in the Australian states of Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland, and New South Wales and its annual revenue of more than AUD 200 million and annual attendances of more than seven million people are greater than the other three Australian football codes combined (the National Rugby League, the Australian Rugby Union as part of the international Super 14 competition and the A-League soccer competition). According to Tatz (1995: 18), most 'sports—including the football codes—only became " available " [to Indigenous people] in the so-called civil rights period, in the era of liberation from special legislation and geographic confinement', which in part explains the substantial increase in the number of Indigenous players at the elite level since 1980.

Australian football-also known as Australian Rules football, Aussie Rules, or "footy"-is the second oldest form of football in the world (Blainey, 2003) and is largely considered the national sport of Australia (2011). In the context of sport, the dominant narratives that emerged are based on 'traditional forms and norms of physical activity that are indicative of a 'culturally conservative institution' (Adair, 2009: 420). From the late 1950s, AFL football programs were televised on multiple channels, and stretched from Thursdays through to Sundays, even though matches were restricted to Saturday afternoons. Sport may be one of the 'great markers of culture' according to Creative Australia, and 'integral to Australia's way of life for the Australian government. But, the sports field has been shaped both by the peculiarities of the Australian context.

By: Anirudha Sharma
Government Senior Secondary School, Bopara