Sport
Sport is not only an important pastime in Tasmania, the state has produced several famous sportsmen and women and also hosted several major sporting events. The Tasmanian Tigers cricket team represents the state successfully (for example the Sheffield Shield in 2007 and 2011) and plays its home games at the Bellerive Oval, Hobart; also the site of international cricket matches. Famous Tasmanian cricketers include David Boon and former Australian captain Ricky Ponting.
Australian Rules Football is also popularly followed, with occasional discussion of a proposed Tasmanian team in the Australian Football League (AFL). Several AFL games have been played at the Aurora Stadium, York Park Launceston, including the Hawthorn Football Club. The stadium was the site of an infamous match between St Kilda and Fremantle which was controversially drawn after the umpires failed to hear the final siren.
Association football (soccer) is played throughout the state, with discussion of a Tasmanian Hyundai A-league Club building on the existing Southern Premier League and the Northern Premier League. Tasmania hosts the Moorilla International tennis tournament as part of the lead up to the Australian Open and is played at the Hobart International Tennis Centre, Hobart. The Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race run every year between Boxing Day and New Year since 1945, finishes in Hobart.
While some of the other sports played and barracked for have grown in popularity, others have declined. For example in basketball Tasmania has not been represented in the National Basketball League since the demise of the Hobart Devils in 1996.
Read more about this topic: Tasmania
Famous quotes containing the word sport:
“Americans living in Latin American countries are often more snobbish than the Latins themselves. The typical American has quite a bit of money by Latin American standards, and he rarely sees a countryman who doesn’t. An American businessman who would think nothing of being seen in a sport shirt on the streets of his home town will be shocked and offended at a suggestion that he appear in Rio de Janeiro, for instance, in anything but a coat and tie.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)
“Rabelais, for instance, is intolerable; one chapter is better than a volume,—it may be sport to him, but it is death to us. A mere humorist, indeed, is a most unhappy man; and his readers are most unhappy also.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“How long, then, Catiline, while you abuse our patience? How long is this madness of yours to make sport of us?”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)