Talk:Sport in Australia

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	To-do list for Sport in Australia:	edit  · history  · watch  · refresh
Write good intro Rewrite each section from bulletted list of links to existing articles to a prose story about that sport. Create any articles corresponding to new red links introduced (propose them to ACOTF if you like) Create daughter articles for any sections that get too big. Add things I've missed to this list Reference here and article on Ausport Awards[1] and recipients

Contents 1 first talk 2 Clarification of title 3 Cricket 4 uni sport 5 Suggestion 6 Uniquely Australian? 7 See also/related links 8 379 racecourses ??? 9 Netball/indoor netball 10 Most popular sport?? 11 Baseball 12 Header image 13 Cleanup 14 AFL reserves

[edit] first talk

Is there any interest in converting this into prose, or would people prefer it to stay as a list of links to other relevant articles? Ambi 02:14, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

It is certainly informative the way it is now, and looks like quite a nice article, but I think gradually adding bits of prose would be a good idea. -- Chuq 03:17, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

It should eventually be changed to prose. This would help to identify missing articles, as it is currently mostly lists of articles already in [[Category:Australian sport]] and its subcategories. --Scott Davis ^Talk 05:45, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Clarification of title

Does this article only talk about sporting events occurring in Australia, rather than sport involving Australians? Would this be why Australia at the Summer Olympics and Australia at the Winter Olympics aren't mentioned? If so, could this page in theory cover sporting events in Australia predominantly involving non-Australians? Andjam 03:11, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

It does link to formula 1, motoGP, Indy 300, as well as other international events in australia. --Ballchef 04:43, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cricket

... shouldn't a potted history be done for this? Same with rugby (union and league). Not much mention of AFL! - Ta bu shi da yu 03:26, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

I was thinking about putting a Cricket in Australia redlink on there.. If you want to expand the articles please do so --- Astrokey44 04:17, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm... I'd like to, but know next to nothing about sport... I can sadly only give suggestions :-( Ta bu shi da yu 11:42, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] uni sport

perhaps a section mentioning the role of uni’s in promoting sport in Australia may be a good idea. AdelaideRandel 04:46, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

ok I started one, perhaps youd like to add to it Astrokey44 01:52, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Nothing that's been written is problematic, but it might be better not to single out universities, and note that religious bodies, corporations, registered clubs, schools (primary and secondary, private and public) and federal, state and local governments also play a role. Andjam 03:29, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

OK well prehaps a section entitled 'Sport promoting organisations in Australia" or something like that

AdelaideRandel 03:57, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion

The page is looking good. Other things that should be discussed in the context of this article include rates of sport participation and the funding of sport by commercial interests and the government of Australia.--nixie 04:19, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

One way to measure an interest in a sport may be to look at how much television coverage it gets, and how many people watch it (ie the ratings for that program). I know that watching isn't the same as doing, but at least television ratings are comparitively objective and standardised. I'd be interested in the figures for Winter Olympics coverage, to see if there has been an upward trend in interest in the Winter Olympics over the past few games. Andjam 12:51, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Television coverage is a fairly biased indicator, though, as it discriminates in favour of male-dominated sports such as football. Probably the best example of this is netball; there's a fair bit of reliable evidence to suggest that netball is the most played sport in the country - or at least in some states - when its television coverage is somewhere down around that of soccer. Pretending that television coverage equals interest in this case would horribly skew the statement. Ambi 14:20, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Would ratings be any better at gauging interest? I know that it'd be influenced by advertising and time-slot (though many Aussies stay up past their bed-time to watch soccer or the Tour de France), but ratings may be more "democratic" than coverage. Andjam 01:49, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

It's still skewed; some sports are more viewer-friendly than others. The amount of people who *watch* netball is far fewer than those who actually play it; the reverse is true for other sports. Using coverage or ratings is only really useful for the major male-dominated sports (i.e. determining which of the football codes is more popular), although the same exception may apply for soccer as well. Ambi 02:30, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Uniquely Australian?

I find "Trugo is a uniquely Australian sport" a little disquieting. Does anyone else think uniquely Australian gives the impression that some other sports are less Australian, or worse still, un-Australian? Or am I being paranoid? Would "Trugo is a sport unique to Australia" be better? Andjam 03:46, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

maybe it does a little. it seems better the way youve worded it here Astrokey44 04:58, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree. It'd be nice if it also mentioned that, while it is uniquely Australian, that the vast majority of Australians haven't heard of it and don't know that it exists. Ambi 05:12, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Its difficult to put that sentiment in writing without being disparaging of it, Ive made an attempt Astrokey44 13:53, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

The above discussion makes some good points. Andjam, I don't quite agree with your disquiet, but I do agree that each subsequent edit has improved this sentence. Certainly, no-one could suggest in good conscience that Trugo is mainstream. Colonel Tom 10:50, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] See also/related links

The further info/related links are crowding up some of the sections. Shouldnt there only be the one main article link at the top of the paragraph, and then the related links be put on that page? ---- Astrokey44|talk 13:44, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 379 racecourses ???

I find this hard to believe. That's one for every 53,000 people. In the UK we have 59 racecourses for three times the population and three times the attendance (6 million). Calsicol 21:19, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Most racecourses are probably nothing more than a dirt track and a stable. Your figure of one track for every 53,000 people isn't that far fetched as most towns in Australia would have a racecourse of some description, with most towns having a population smaller than 50,000. After some Googling.Industry info --Htra0497 17:00, 8 January 2006 (AEDST)

[edit] Netball/indoor netball

I believe that the section "indoor netball" should be titled Netball. The Commonwealth Bank Trophy, although played indoors, is played under regular netball rules and is the most popular version of the sport. Indoor netball is played with six rather than seven players and usually has netting around the court preventing the ball from leaving the court. Not all netball that is played indoors is acutally indoor netball. Soundabuser 05:58, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

In that case I agree "netball" would be the preferred title -- Chuq 01:48, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Most popular sport??

I believe this article needs figures on sport participation levels perhaps then we can ascertain the most popular sports. Do we base it on TV ratings/sponsorship/participation??

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has figures at: http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/94713ad445ff1425ca25682000192af2/daaada81176e2f89ca256f7200833023!OpenDocument

If we look at the figures and discount predominately recreational activities rather than organised sports (such as walking,swimming,golf,cycling,tennis,etc) there are a few suprises: Netball is far and away the most popular sport in Australia with 389,400 female participants (not sure about males) followed by cricket with 340,000 and soccer with 318,000. Soundabuser 06:06, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

The Australian Government agrees with you! When the government talks about popular sports, they talk about participation in sports - not TV ratings/coverage/attendance. The ABS figures above are a bit dated. The Australian Sports Commission provides the most recent figures through their annual survey: [2] User:snewoc 12:41, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

There's been a recent edit to the intro where someone has added AFL and League as amongst the top participated sports in Australia. As the [3]] show, the top ten sports participated in by Australians in an organised setting are (from highest participants down) golf, tennis, netball, soocer (outdoor), swimming, cricket (outdoor), lawn bowls, AFL, basketball and touch footy. Obviously it's not suitable to list all ten of these sports in the intro. I'd suggest just the first five, which would exclude AFL (and obviously league because it's not even the top 10). I don't dispute that league is an important sport in Australia - but it is only participated in by 134,000 Australians - that's nothing compared to golf, tennis, netball - all over half a million participants each. In fact, all the top 10 have at least 300k participants. So, I'd suggest that the intro focus on participation of the top 5 sports - the very next paragraphs mentions the league and AFL anyway. User:snewoc

Fair enough, but since you've decided to only add four, I've decided to remove soccer and add golf, as its more popular.

[edit] Baseball

tonight ive started the Australian Baseball League page, anyone interested in contributing to this or the related Australian Baseball page please do so, ive noticed that baseball on this page only has the link to the main article still. if anyone is interested in helping out in any way please drop me a message on my talk page! cheers --Dan027 13:31, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Header image

Does anyone else think the womens AFL picture at the top isn't suitable? It is large, poorly framed, doesn't show the ball (so just looks like some women falling over each other), and as it isn't a mainstream sport it isn't really representative of sports in Australia in general - maybe an image of a cricket, AFL (mens) or netball game would be more suitable, or a montage? -- Chuq 23:14, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd definitely be surprised if we couldn't come up with a better image for a topic this broad. I'd like to see a good image of a local game of cricket, football (any of the more distinctive codes), or netball. JPD (talk) 12:36, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what specifically in this article would require cleanup? -- Chuq 03:57, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

References are the main thing. I did a cleanup of the refs based on basic MOS, and added a references section, but they still need to be converted to proper citation format. --Rulesfan 07:16, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AFL reserves

I removed this comment entirely, even after Grant's modification, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I don't think it is fairly representing the situation to refer to the leagues as though they were reserve leauges belonging to the AFL clubs, and secondly because I don't think mentioning reserve teams actually gives any relevant information in that context. If anything more than the national competition shoudl be mentioned, the state/regional leagues should be mentioned in their own right. (By the way, it's not just the Melbourne teams - the Sydney reserves play in AFL Canberra.) JPD (talk) 12:56, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I thought it looked sort of out of place. However i think that the way the paragraph is written it sounds as though people go straight to the AFL after playing in leagues that have no connections at all to the AFL. Maybe something could go along the lines of "however all AFL clubs are linked to other clubs often called reserves" (Unsigned post December 19, 2006 by User:Krabby me.)

But not all of the AFL are linked to specific reserve clubs. The WA and SA clubs send their players to every club in the WAFL and SANFL. Brisbane (I think) do the same with the Queensland State League clubs. I don't know about SA, but both Freo and Eagles players can be assigned to any club in the WAFL. There was an experiment several years ago whereby Freo players went only to South Fremantle and Eagles players went only to Claremont but this was unpopular for obvious reasons and was scrapped after one or two seasons. Grant65 | Talk 08:46, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. I don't read it as saying anything about how people get to AFL level, but the links with AFL clubs could be mentioned along with the state leagues in the last sentence if that made it clearer. JPD (talk) 11:19, 19 December 2006 (UTC)