AFL – home & away season, and AFL Grand Final

Rugby League – albeit, not often, but it still exists

Soccer

Australian Open Tennis Championship – 1 of 4 of the worlds grand slam tournaments

Melbourne Boxing Day Test – biggest test match in the world, drawing over a crowd of 150,000 at the worlds largest cricket stadium, the MCG

Moonah Classic – golf tournament

Formula one Grand Prix – watched around the world

Melbourne Cup – the race that stops the nation. Also watched internationally, and is one of the richest horse races in the world.

Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix

Spring Racing Carnival

Rip Curl Pro

Warrnambool May Race Carnival

Superbike World Championship

and more…

Sure, some of the events are not entirely popular and world class, but they still draw large passionate crowds all year round. Melbourne deserves its title as the Ultimate Sports City!

But then if you consider something the world’s greatest, you need to consider what the world thinks.

It is referenced.

The Australian Ice Hockey competition is one of the oldest in the world, too.

Melbourne is the home of the ashes urn, (Sunbury lays claim) and was presented by a group of Melbourne Women when England tourned in 1882/83.

Albert Park is a famous Grand Prix circuit and the Australian home of such, dating back to the Bradham days,

Kooyong – alas, no longer used and the Aust Open is no longer a grass court tourney —– mores the shame,

Bathurst (NSW) is a world reknowned Race track,

Bell’s Beach,…..famous would over,

we do alright

and the MCG doubles up as the first Sth Hemisphere Olympic Stadium, and doubles more than doubles as the home of Australian Football – - in addition to it’s cricket role.

For a country barely over 200 years old and born from the British Empire ruled by London – - Australia is going alright on any relative scale,…..and does okay in real terms too.

ON a relative scale –

allowing for the youth of Australia, and the domestic population base – - we stand very, very well and have 2 Olympic City’s, along with 1 of 4 Tennis Grand Slams and 1 of a dozen of so F1 GPs and likewise MotoGP’s etc,

and to boot – we also have our own indigenous footy code that goes alright.

On the relative scale as well – you gotta factor in the relative isolation – - it’s far, far easier in the UK for example to turn it into a big business with Europe on their doorstep.

The kinda fair comparison for Australia to benchmark with is Canada but even Canada has the 330 million (or however many) Americans just south of the border.

2. Just because English individuals don’t win at tennis, or England isn’t the best rugby team or our cricket team isn’t the best only makes the argument that Melbourne is the home of sport ridiculous.

Aussies are not great at tennis at the moment, not that great at rugby (p.s. don’t mention rugby in Melbourne, you may as well speak Russian), Aussie cricket team isn’t the best at the moment (well, yeah at ODI’s) and your football team, well….. least said the better.

Those 13 clubs all have their own ground and individual support…this is why London wins. Every major team in practically any sport has a spiritual home. The Poms are sickened by the idea of ground sharing and don’t have even a 10% of the financial problems in sport we tend to have.

Australia is way down the list. We think we are big players but we really, really aren’t. We are too busy hating other sports be really come together and do the business. Listen to AFL fans opposition to moving the season for the greatest show on earth: The World Cup. It’s absolutely ridiculous and we haven’t even got to the bitching that would happen over which city would host a WC final. Can you imagine.

Just as a side note….our WC bid is likely to be derailed by our media who loathe the sport and Google is a way too easy barometer of Australian attitudes.

London first (Olympics as already stated, FA Cup, usually five or six RU tests, three or four Cricket tests/ ODIs, Challenge Cup, Wimbledon)

New York second (US Open tennis, Yankees v. Mets [actually one of the only true Baseball derbies) something like four Superbowls/ MLB All Stars/ billions of World Series, many of which ended 4-3, not as common as you’d think!)

Sydney third (Sydney to Hobart, NRL Grand Final, mandatory SOO ‘final’ RWC 2003 Final/S-Final/ Q-Finals 2x A-League finals, which I’ve heard were nothing short of delerium-inducing, Naughties first Olympics: throw in just how congested the Sydney sporting economy is with two codes that seem to mean very little to Southern Australians but calling these events might be stretching it. Add to that four or five RU tests, three Cricket matches and at least one of the annual BBall/ Netball tests)

Melbourne fourth (Aussie Open, F1, AFL grand final + International Rules BB every two-three years, pretty much always a Netball and a BBall Test. Boxing Day Tests, occasional SOO: less overall than Sydney but packing far more punch per square inch as few other than certain Aussies are interested in many of Sydney’s sporting events)

Dubai fifth: Maybe would be fourth if Golf in the Emirates was actually a major or ‘major’ tournament (2x Golf, Invitational Tennis, Rugby Sevens series/ World Cup, other friendlies or competitive matches, including Cricket tournies, Soccer internationals, RU tests…anything else we can think of, as it seems to be a hub of sporting interest and there’s heaps of sporting institutes there…

Not sure beyond that

But all of these cities have culture, locality and a certain cosmopolitian vibe which is what attracts major events in the first place

On the subject of sporting events If you take the entire country of Australia weighed up against London, perhaps it does match in terms of events. If you include the entirety of England (let alone the entire UK) I don’t think you can really argue that Australia matches England in terms of sporting events.

Think about it:
Wembly is the “official” Home of football, but the national team suck and most people would say Brazil is the real/spiritual home.
Wimbeldon – yeah, home of tennis, but the English themselves are and have been conspicuously absent in its title holders for a long long time.
Twickenham – again, is the “official” home of rugby, but New Zealand is pretty much universally regarded as the real/spiritual home.
Lords – again, home of cricket, but it lacks any sort of intimidation factor due to the ineptitude of the British national side.

What I’m trying to say I guess is that being the official “home of this or that” doesn’t matter much when no one respects you in that particular category.