Sport In Australia
Sport is an important part of the culture in Australia, with a long history in the country dating back to the pre-colonial period. Early sports that were played included cricket, horse racing, Australian rules football and rugby. Sport evolved with Australian national identity through events like Phar Lap, the Bodyline series and the America's Cup races,
There are a number of professional sport leagues in Australia, including the Australian Football League (Australian rules football), National Rugby League (rugby league), Super Rugby (rugby union), the A league and W-League (soccer), ANZ Championship (Netball), the National Basketball League, the Women's National Basketball League and the Australian Baseball League. Attendance for some of these leagues over the course of a single season tops one million spectators in leagues like the AFL, A-league and NRL.
The media plays an important part in Australia's sporting landscape. Many sporting events are televised or are covered by the radio. The government has anti-siphoning laws to protect free-to-air stations. Beyond televising live events, there are many sport television shows, sport talk shows on the radio, magazines dedicated to sport and extensive newspaper coverage. Australian sport has also been the subject of Australian made films such as The Club, Australian Rules, The Final Winter and Footy Legends.
As a nation, Australia has competed in many international events including the Olympics and Paralympics, and the Commonwealth Games. The country has a large number of national teams in sports such as cricket, rugby union, rugby league, basketball, hockey, netball, soccer, softball, water polo and wheelchair rugby. Sport is played by different populations in Australia including women, people with disabilities and Australia's indigenous people.
Read more about Sport In Australia: Organisation, Participation, Professional Sport, Amateur Sport, Sports Media, International Competitions, National Teams
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“Sport in the sense of a mass-spectacle, with death to add to the underlying excitement, comes into existence when a population has been drilled and regimented and depressed to such an extent that it needs at least a vicarious participation in difficult feats of strength or skill or heroism in order to sustain its waning life-sense.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“Every American travelling in England gets his own individual sport out of the toy passenger and freight trains and the tiny locomotives, with their faint, indignant, tiny whistle. Especially in western England one wonders how the business of a nation can possibly be carried on by means so insufficient.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
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—Alex Atkinson, British humor writer. repr. In Present Laughter, ed. Alan Coren (1982)