Barassi Line

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Barassi Line is an imaginary line that runs from Arnhem Land down through Birdsville, Canberra, and through southern New South Wales; the Riverina is south of the Barassi Line. Despite Australia's otherwise homogeneous nature, Australian rules football is played to the west and south of the line, and on the other side rugby league and rugby union are the most important codes of football played.

The term 'Barassi Line' was first coined by Professor Ian Turner in his 1978 Ron Barassi Memorial Lecture^[1], one of a series of lectures named after Ron Barassi senior, who played a handful of Australian rules football games for Melbourne in the Victorian Football League (VFL) before enlisting to fight in World War Two and subsequently dying from shrapnel wounds.

The Barassi Line itself was named after Ron Barassi junior, the former Barassi's son. At the time, the VFL consisted of 11 clubs in Melbourne and one in regional Victoria, and Barassi jnr was former star player for Melbourne and Carlton and a premiership-winning coach with Carlton and North Melbourne. Barassi jnr believed in spreading the Australian rules football code around the nation with an evangelical zeal, and had foreseen a time when Australian rules football clubs from around Australia, including up to four from New South Wales and Queensland, would play in a national football league with only a handful of them based in Melbourne.

This prediction was ridiculed by many then but to a large extent it came true by 1997, with six of sixteen clubs in the former Victorian, now Australian Football League (AFL) based outside of Victoria, two of them behind the Barassi Line.

Since the term was first used, the Barassi Line appears to have blurred somewhat, with AFL clubs in Brisbane and Sydney both enjoying well-entrenched support, while rugby and and rugby league also enjoy a comparable level of support in Perth and Melbourne.