Lacrosse in Australia

Lacrosse in Australia is a minor sport, with a long and proud history dating back to 1876, with a small but dedicated community of participants and volunteers. The established centres for the game are in the greater metropolitan areas of Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth. In these cities there are organised weekend field lacrosse competitions for men and women at senior and junior levels, played over the winter months (April until September). In the off-season, there are informal box lacrosse and sofcrosse competitions, though the majority of players in Australia are mostly of the field lacrosse type. Some lacrosse is also played in Sydney, Newcastle, South East Queensland, Townsville, Cairns and Hobart, it is very much at the developmental level.

Lacrosse in Australia is now governed by a single governing body, the Australian Lacrosse Association (ALA), following the merger of Lacrosse Australia and Women's Lacrosse Australia, who had until 2008 governed the men's and women's versions of the games independently. The move to a unified national body was precipitated by the withholding of funds by the Australian federal government.

The pioneer of lacrosse in Victoria (and Australia as a whole) was a Canadian, Lambton L. Mount. He came to the Victorian goldfields as a fourteen-year-old with his family in 1853 but it was not until 1875 that he was moved to revive his early boyhood memories of lacrosse. After watching the football final between Carlton and Melbourne in that year it occurred to him that lacrosse was a superior game.