Australian rules football in New Zealand is a rapidly growing sport in a nation where rugby union is the more popular football code. Australian rules has a history in New Zealand dating back to the late 1860s, but modern competition re-commenced in 1974 and is played during the summer after the rugby season.
The game is primarily organised in four provinces - Auckland (Auckland Australian Football League), Canterbury, New Zealand (Canterbury Australian Football League), Wellington (Wellington AFL) and Waikato (Waikato AFL). A new Otago league is currently in formation.
A number of New Zealanders have played the game at the highest level, the fully professional Australian Football League and other players developed in New Zealand have played professionally in Australian state leagues.
New Zealand's national senior team were international champions in 2005, however still behind Australia having never beaten an Australian club at any level.
Read more about Australian Rules Football In New Zealand: Participation, Leagues & Competitions, Governing Body, National Team
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“The Australian mind, I can state with authority, is easily boggled.”
—Charles Osborne (b. 1927)
“Logic teaches rules for presentation, not thinking.”
—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)
“Teasing is universal. Anthropologists have found the same fundamental patterns of teasing among New Zealand aborigine children and inner-city kids on the playgrounds of Philadelphia.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)