Australian Rules Football
Australian rules football was first played in 2003, when the Tonga Australian Football Association was founded. A school competition has been played yearly since then, including a tour to Samoa. A Tongan team competed at the 2004 Australian Football Multicultural Cup.
The senior men's representative team is known as the Black Marlins, and hosted Australian amateur team the Fitzroy Reds in late 2006.
Although the Black Marlins could not raise the money required to send a team to the 2008 Australian Football International Cup, but a Tongan-Australian side did participate in the multicultural division of the competition against multicultural sides from Asia and Africa.
Read more about this topic: Sport In Tonga
Famous quotes containing the words australian, rules and/or football:
“Each Australian is a Ulysses.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)
“The young break rules for fun. The old for profit.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“People stress the violence. That’s the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there’s a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There’s a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there’s a satisfaction to the game that can’t be duplicated. There’s a harmony.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)