Sport in Australia: Difference between revisions

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The early history of the game starts around the 1880's, with a number of clubs starting and playing matches between each other. The sport was relatively popular, but in Melbourne especially, a large push lead to a marginalisation of the pitches required, with football clubs being 'locked out' with areas converted into oval AFL/Cricket areas.

The massive multi-ethnic wave of immigrants that came to Australia after World War II brought a lot of soccer fans into the country, who formed their own teams and became devoted followers of the game: this resulted in an expansion of popularity for soccer, but it also resulted in it being dismissed as an "ethnic sport" (often by using the term 'wogball') by Anglo-Australians. And this could be a fair ~~charge -- the~~ National Soccer League, established 1977, was primarily made up of ethnic-based teams (whether Greek, Italian, Serbian etc.)

The massive multi-ethnic wave of immigrants that came to Australia after World War II brought a lot of soccer fans into the country, who formed their own teams and became devoted followers of the game: this resulted in an expansion of popularity for soccer, but it also resulted in it being dismissed as an "ethnic sport" (often by using the term 'wogball') by Anglo-Australians. And this could be a fair charge—the National Soccer League, established 1977, was primarily made up of ethnic-based teams (whether Greek, Italian, Serbian etc.)

And so it was up till as recently as 2005. But then several things happened which has caused the popularity of the sport to expand and diversify rapidly: first, the NSL crumbled in 2004 partly due to [[Executive Meddling]] and being [[Screwed by the Network]], and was replaced the following year by the A-League, which has a strict policy against ethnic teams and consisted of teams evenly spaced around the country, limited (initially) to one team per city; second, the Aussie national team (the Socceroos) reached the round of 16 in the 2006 FIFA World Cup, generating greater interest as a point of national pride. This has added up to soccer starting to become popular in mainstream Australia. It's even ''*gasp*'' being called '''football''' in some media. Yet somehow, the A-League still isn't broadcast on free-to-air television.