History
The Carter Report titled “Investing in the Future of Australian Football (October 2001)”, identified segment gaps in Aussie Rules and its demographic reach. The research found that unlike codes such as rugby league with the successful touch football (rugby league), Aussie Rules did not have a recreational version of the game to cater for the growing recreational participation market. In the past, the nearest recreational form of the game was the casual pastime of kick-to-kick, rather than an organised team sport. AFL Recreational Football (Recreational Footy or Rec Footy) was developed by the Australian Football League to provide maximum involvement at all levels with a variation of the game that virtually anyone can play. It is often referred to as Auskick for adults and aims to increase participation in women.
The game was originally trialled in Western Australia by the WAFL in 2003. By 2004, the game has grown to 592 players (Western Australia: 34 teams & 344 players; Victoria: 16 teams & 248 players).
In 2005, the game grew quickly, especially in Queensland.
In 2006 several new teams began. The sport is now played in all Australian states, with a heavy involvement at universities. A small number of Women's Footy teams in the United States also began playing informal games of Recreational Football. Future representative games are planned.
Read more about this topic: Rec Footy
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.”
—Henry Ford (1863–1947)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)