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Is AFL in Sydney finally seeing sustained growth?

Roar Guru
26th December, 2017
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The AFL sits atop the pile of Australian sports. (AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts)
Roar Guru
26th December, 2017
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1653 Reads

While the first recorded game of Australian football in Sydney was in 1877, between the Waratah rugby club and the now-AFL Club Carlton, it wasn’t until 1880 that the NSW Australian Football Association was formed, albeit loosely.

In that year, the first local game was recorded as being played between East Sydney, who defeated Sydney 3.10.28 to 1.6.12 at what is now the Sydney Cricket Ground.

This was the first game of any football played on the ground.

The game attracted a reasonable amount of newspaper exposure and rivalled the rugby code until 1894, when during one of the worst depressions to hit the country, the game fell from favour and the association collapsed.

It was revived in 1903 when it was arranged for VFL clubs Collingwood and Fitzroy to fixture a match at the Sydney Cricket Ground in May of that year.

This stimulated interest in the game, a new competition and the NSW Australian Football League was formed. To use a contemporary phrase, `the league was powering’. In 1911 it purchased a ground on Botany Road, Alexandria, and appointed a full-time secretary.

The game in Newcastle mirrors somewhat the Sydney league, with the game introduced via miners in the 1880s. The game in the Illawarra was a relative latecomer, with the South Coast Senior league forming in 1969.

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In 2017, the game around the Sydney Basin is at its strongest in history.

In 2010, there were 54 senior teams playing in Sydney, fast forward to 2017 and there were 79 (plus a few more in the NEAFL). In the Black Diamond League, centered around Newcastle, in 2011 there were 18 senior teams, in 2018, 41 teams have nominated. In 2013, there were 854 players playing senior football in the BDL and in 2016 there were 1034.

In Sydney junior football, in 2012 in GWS’s zone there were 67 junior teams, in 2017 there was 155. In the Swans’ zone, in 2012 there were 210 teams, in 2017 there were 366 teams from under 8s to 17s.

Schoolboy football in Sydney across elite private schools such as Shore, Riverview and Knox did not exist in 2012, yet on Saturday mornings in 2017, 50 teams were playing from Year 7 to 12, and quite a number of AFL footballers have been drafted from there. Something similar will happen next year in the city’s private girls schools.

Newcastle junior football has also gone through something similar. In 2013, there were only eight under-9 teams, in 2017 there were 18. The Central Coast juniors, which is a separate junior league, has grown albeit slower than Newcastle.

Yhe Illawarra league comprises 19 senior men’s teams across two divisions, and a junior league that has remained relatively static for a number of years – nowhere near the growth of Sydney and the Black Diamond League.

The game of Australian football is as healthy as it has ever been across the Sydney basin and looks to grow even bigger in the coming years.

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Maybe, just maybe, the game can cement itself and beat the boom-bust cycle that it has had over its 140-year history in the state.

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