Country zone

In Australian rules football, zoning (originally called district football, or electorate football in South Australia) refers to a system whereby a given area, either region or lower-level football league, is reserved exclusively for one club.

Zoning has been historically an important part of most major Australian football leagues, being usually justified as necessary to ensure a reasonably equitable competition.

In the early years of Australian rules football, players, though required to be amateurs, were free agents.

Problems arose as a small number of clubs (Carlton, Geelong and South Melbourne in the VFA, Norwood, Port Adelaide and South Adelaide in the SAFA and Fremantle in the WAFA) perennially dominated the competition, leaving considerable pressure on the leagues to eliminate this inequality in order to retain interest.

District football was first introduced in the SANFL in 1897, with compulsory district qualification from 1899. Under district football, a player could only play for the club whose district he resided in.

The effect on the competitiveness of the SANFL was noteworthy: between 1877 to 1899, Norwood, South Adelaide and Port Adelaide won 22 of the 24 premierships, including several sequences of successive premierships (for instance, South Adelaide had won six of the last eight, and Norwood had won 11 premierships in their first 17 years, including sequences of six and three in succession). In the years between 1900 and 1912, two teams who had previously been perennially been close to or at the bottom of the ladder won premierships: North Adelaide in 1900, 1902, and 1905, and West Adelaide in 1908-1909 and 1911-1912 (four premierships in five years).

The VFL formally adopted metropolitan zoning for the 1916 season under laws which required a player to play for the club in his zone he lived, unless he:

Metropolitan zoning has been seen by historians of the VFL as improving the competitive balance of the league in the years following World War I. When Footscray, Hawthorn and North Melbourne were admitted for the 1925 season, they were allocated zones. Over time, boundaries were changed to cope with demographic shifts.

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