Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
[2] [3] The following year, four members of the newly formed Melbourne Football Club codified the laws from which Australian rules football evolved. Professional historians began taking a serious interest in the origins of Australian rules football in the late 1970s, and the first academic study of the sport's origins was published in 1982.
(See also: Australian football leagues outside Australia.) Today, Australian football is a major spectator sport in Australia and Nauru, although occasional exhibition games are staged in other countries. Some local grand final and carnival type events in Papua New Guinea, Nauru, England and the United States have occasionally drawn attendances ...
Until 1977, interstate Australian rules football games were played by teams representing the major football leagues or organisations, with players representing the state or territory they were playing in at the time. From 1977, players were selected for their states under partial or full state of origin selection rules. Football historian John ...
In Australia, Australian rules football is the most popular spectator sport and the second most participated code of football. Since originating in Victoria in 1858 and spreading elsewhere from 1866, it has been played continuously in every Australian state since 1903 plus the two major territories since 1916.
SUANFC claims to be a spin-off of Australia's oldest rugby union club, Sydney University Football Club founded in 1865, which experimented with Australian rules in its early years. If the claim is accepted, this would make SUANFC the oldest Australian rules football club in NSW. However it did not play an Australian rules fixture until 1887 ...
Australian rules football is known by several nicknames, including Aussie rules, football and footy. [8] In some regions, where other codes of football are more popular, the sport is most often called AFL after the Australian Football League, while the league itself also uses this name for local competitions in some areas.
The Australian Football League (AFL) is the pre-eminent professional competition of Australian rules football. It was originally named the Victorian Football League (VFL) and was founded in 1896 as a breakaway competition from the Victorian Football Association (VFA), with its inaugural season in 1897.
Australian rules football was codified in 1859 by members of the Melbourne Football Club.The first rules were devised by the Australian-born Tom Wills, who was educated at Rugby School; Englishmen William Hammersley and J. B. Thompson, fellow students at Cambridge's Trinity College; and Irish Australian Thomas H. Smith, who played rugby football at Dublin University.