New South Wales Australian rules football team
| Australian rules football in New South Wales | |
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Two ruckmen contest the bounce in a suburban western Sydney AFL game between the East Coast Eagles AFC and Campbelltown Kangaroos AFC
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| Governing body | AFL NSW/ACT |
| Representative team | New South Wales |
| First played | 1877, Sydney |
| Registered players | 95,100 (total) 7,225 (adult) |
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Club competitions
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Audience records
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| Single match | 72,393 (2003). AFL Sydney Swans v. Collingwood. (Telstra Stadium, Sydney) |
Australian rules football has been played in New South Wales since the 1870s; however it has a chequered history in the state and has generally been overshadowed in popularity as a winter sport by the rugby football codes. This phenomenon is known as the Barassi Line. Compared to rugby league, Australian football had a small presence in Sydney until the 1980s. The sport is popular elsewhere in the state, and has been the dominant code in the Riverina (the region of New South Wales closest to Victoria) and Broken Hill (located near the South Australian border). Its popularity is constantly increasing northward.
The code's recent growth in popularity in Sydney (where the majority of the state's population lives) has been partly tied to the success of the Sydney Swans which relocated from Melbourne in 1982. Since 1996, when it first made the Grand Final, the club has generated media hype and public interest as well as greater participation for the sport. Due to successive finals appearances the interest has been sustained over many seasons, most notably in 2005 and 2006 with two successive Grand Final appearances and the club's first premiership since its relocation. Another Swans premiership win in 2012 and the introduction of a second AFL team in Sydney, the Greater Western Sydney Giants, has increased the momentum behind Australian football in Sydney.
Australian regional rivalries have played a large role in the Swans' popularity. Ironically, the cultural rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne significantly hamper the sport's growth in New South Wales. In 2008 the AFL stated their intention to establish a second team in Sydney by 2012, to be an expansion team based in the western suburbs. An Australian Senate enquiry into the Tasmanian AFL Bid concluded that Sydney had "insurmountable cultural barriers" to the establishment of a second AFL team. In spite of this, the second Sydney club was successfully established and commenced AFL competition in 2012. In Sydney, parts of northern New South Wales and to the majority of the state's population, the sport is referred to as "AFL", but in the Riverina region, it is often referred to as "Aussie rules", "footy" or "football".
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