Zoning (Australian Rules football)

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 days of Australian rules football, players, though required to be amateurs, were free agents. Because a small number of clubs (such as Norwood in the SAFA and Fremantle in the WAFA) perennially dominated the competition, pressure to eliminate this inequality was always considerable. 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, and the effect on the competitiveness of the SANFL was noteworthy: whereas previously clubs often had won three premierships in a row or four premierships in five years, neither occurred again until West Adelaide, who had perennially struggled and were close to or at the bottom of the ladder in their first ten years in the competition (1898-1907), won four premierships between 1908 and 1912.

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.

Whilst recent studies have shown that metropolitan zoning became less effective at equalising playing strength following the admittance of the three new clubs in 1925, it was already firmly accepted by the majority of club officials in most Australian Rules competitions by the late 1920s and at no stage during the following forty years was there ever any thought of abolishing it, while a tradition of club loyalty further entrenched the viewpoint that zoning was a legitimate policy.

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