Sports Played in Winter
Australia's mild winters mean that in most parts of Australia, regular outdoor sports can be played all year, and indeed more vigorous sports are more comfortably played in winter. Australian rules football and rugby league, the two most popular spectator sports in Australia, are played primarily in winter. See Sport in Australia.
Reports of rugby union being played in Australia date back to the 1820s, with local clubs established by the 1860s. The game has been especially popular as a winter sport in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. The Australian national rugby union team is called the Wallabies. Since the 1920s the Wallabies have worn green and gold jerseys. Despite having a relatively small player base, mainly in NSW and Queensland, the national side has twice won the Rugby World Cup – in 1991 and 1999. Australia hosted the 2003 Rugby World Cup, which saw the Wallabies defeated by England in the final at Telstra Stadium. Other notable competitions include the annual Bledisloe Cup played against Australia's traditional rivals, the New Zealand All Blacks since 1931, and the Tri-Nations competition involving South Africa and New Zealand. Australia has produced a number of notable rugby players of national stature, including Sir Edward Dunlop, Mark Ella (one of the first indigenous Australians to captain a national side) and the prolific try scorer David Campese.
In 1908, rugby league was established in Australia by former rugby union players and supporters as a breakaway professional code. The new code gained and has maintained a wider following in Australia than rugby union, which remained amateur until the 1990s. It has traditionally been seen as a "working man's sport" with its roots in the working class communities of the northern English counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire translating to similar areas of Western Sydney and Brisbane. Rugby league is the most popular winter sport in New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory. The elite club competition is the National Rugby League (NRL), which features ten teams from New South Wales, three teams from Queensland, and one team each from Victoria, Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand. The season culminates in the premiership deciding game, the NRL Grand Final, traditionally one of Australia's most popular sporting events and one of the largest club championship matches in the world. Rugby League is played in all Australian states and territories, but has a much reduced participation in the southern and western states. The New South Wales Blues and Queensland Maroons play a representative series against each other every year, called the State of Origin series, which is one of Australia's major sporting events. In addition, the Australian Kangaroos represent the country in international matches. Since its inception in 1954, the Australian team has dominated the Rugby League World Cup, having won the competition nine times.
Australian rules football (usually called "Aussie rules" or "AFL") is a popular spectator sport and a participation sport in all Australian states and territories, though its core support lies in four of the six states; Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania. The national competition, the Australian Football League, evolved from a Victorian state competition. The AFL Grand Final is traditionally played each year at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Australian rules football culture has a strong set of rituals and traditions, many of which have crossed sporting boundaries in Australia.
Soccer is a high participation football code, with both boys and girls at junior level as well with men and women at senior level. A number of major international stars have played for the national team in recent years including Tim Cahill, Mark Viduka, Mark Schwarzer and Harry Kewell. Australia's national team, the Socceroos, as of 2010 has competed at three FIFA World Cups. The Australian Government sought to host the event, the world's most watched sporting event, in either 2018 or 2022 but the bid failed.
Polocrosse is an equine team sport that was developed in New South Wales before the Second World War. This sport is now played by men, women and juniors in many parts of the world.
Read more about this topic: Winter Sport In Australia
Famous quotes containing the words sports, played and/or winter:
“Come, my Celia, let us prove
While we may the sports of love;
Time will not be ours forever,
He at length our good will sever.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“They sat together halfway up a cliff
In a small niche let into it, the girl
Brightly, as if a star played on the place,
Paul darkly, like her shadow.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“There was never a revolution to equal it, and never a city more glorious than Petrograd, and for all that period of my life I lived another and braved the ice of winter and the summer flies in Vyborg while across my adopted country of the past, winds of the revolution blew their flame, and all of us suffered hunger while we drank at the wine of equality.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)