ABSTRACT
The code of Australian Football has a unique place in Australian society. It is, by far, the most popular winter football code in Australia, which sees people from across different social, economic and ethnic sectors participate at all levels, from grassroots community organisations right through to the elite level. In 1990, the Victorian Football League (VFL) that had been operating for 113 years officially became the Australian Football League (AFL). The code, colloquially known as Aussie Rules, went from football’s Victorian heartland as a suburban-based VFL competition (i.e., inner-city Melbourne clubs such as Carlton, Essendon and Fitzroy) to the first major football code to aggressively push into new territories. This had its precursor with the South Melbourne football club becoming the Sydney Swans in 1982 and then later in 1987 with the West Coast Eagles in Western Australia. Today, the AFL can be seen to be nationally conspicuous, in a way that perhaps the National Rugby League (NRL) and the Australian Rugby Union (ARU) are not, and now sees multiple franchises in all major capital cities and with several AFL sides playing ‘home games’ in places like Darwin, Alice Springs, Hobart and Launceston.
