Australian rules football culture

A capacity crowd at an AFL game at AAMI Stadium in Adelaide.

Australian rules football is the most highly attended spectator sport in Australia: government figures show that more than 2.5 million people attended games in 2005-06.[3] In 2007 (including finals matches), a cumulative 7,049,945 people attended Australian Football League premiership matches, a record for the competition.[4] In 2005, a further 307,181 attended NAB Cup pre-season matches and 117,552 attended Regional Challenge pre-season practice matches around the country.

As of 2005 the AFL is one of only five professional sports leagues in the world with an average attendance above thirty thousand (the others are the NFL in the United States and Major League Baseball in the U.S. and Canada, and the top division soccer leagues in Germany and England). In 2007, the average attendance of 38,113 made the AFL the second best attended domestic club league in the world, after only the NFL in the United States.

The Melbourne Cricket Ground is the largest stadium used for Australian rules football and the permanent home of the AFL Grand Final. It is one of the largest sporting stadiums in the world and was the venue for the record Australian rules football attendance of 121,696 at the 1970 VFL Grand Final, between Carlton and Collingwood - which game was also historic, in that it heralded the dawning of a new style of football - still largely in use today, wherein handballing was introduced more to commence the attack from the back line. Redevelopment since then to a mainly seated stadium has reduced the current capacity to approximately 100,000.

In addition to the national AFL competition, some semi-professional local leagues also draw significant crowds. Although crowds for state leagues have suffered in recent years, they continue to draw support, particularly for finals matches. The South Australian SANFL drew an attendance of 309,874 in 2006 and the Western Australian WAFL drew an official attendance of 207,154. Other leagues, such as the Victorian VFL Northern Territory Football League and the popular country league Ovens & Murray also charge admission and draw notable crowds (but with no available attendance figures).

Outside of Australia, the game has drawn notable attendances only for occasional carnival type events, such as International tests and exhibition matches.

Part of the 2006 AFL Grand Final pre-match entertainment. The AFL Grand Final is one of the most watched sporting events on television in Australia.

The national AFL is the main league which is shown on television in Australia.

The 2005 AFL Grand Final was watched by a record television audience of more than 3.3 million people across Australia's five most populous cities—the five mainland state capitals—including 1.2 million in Melbourne and 991,000 in Sydney.[5] In 2006, the national audience was 3.145 million, including 1.182 million in Melbourne and 759,000 in Sydney.[6]

According to OzTAM, in recent years, the AFL Grand Final has reached the top five programs across the five biggest cities in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. In 2007, it was #1 in metropolitan markets. Australian rules football has achieved a #1 rating in the sports category in both 2004 and 2005.

Some of the more popular regional leagues in Australia have the "match of the week" televised locally and free-to-air on ABC Television's respective state networks. The SANFL is the most popular of these regional competitions measuring a total of 1,415,000 television viewers in 2007.[7]

Some of these regional leagues also attracted a national audience through free-to-air broadcasting on television networks such as ABC2. OzTAM began measuring these audiences in 2006. Despite a large number of complaints, ABC2 withdrew all of these broadcasts in early 2008.[8][9] However in 2010 the ABC began replaying these matches nationwide, online via the new ABC iView catch-up TV service. In 2012, the ABC commenced screening replays of the previous weekends VFL, SANFL, WAFL matches in the early hours of the morning during the week from 3.00AM - 5.30AM (local time in each state) nationwide on the ABC1 channel

Australian rules also has a nominal but growing international audience. Since 2005, some AFL matches have been shown in the pacific rim region for the first time through the Australia Network. The AFL Grand Final is broadcast to many countries and attracts many million viewers worldwide. This audience has grown to approximately 30 million viewers from 72 countries.[10]

According to Roy Morgan Research, more Americans watch Australian Rules Football than Australians. A poll taken between April 2002 and March 2004 showed that 7,496,000 North Americans compared to 7,004,000 Australians watch Australian Rules Football at least occasionally on television.[11]

The AFL website was the #1 most popular Hitwise Australian sports website in 2004, increasing in market share by 9.86% over that year.[12] In 2006, other consistently high traffic websites in the Australian Top 20 included AFL Dream Team, (Trading Post) AFL Footy Tipping, BigFooty.com and Bomberland.[13] In 2006, the search term 'afl' represented the highest number of search terms (2.48%) that delivered users to Hitwise sports category listed websites.[14] Statistics show that Victorians consist of 43% of all visits to the AFL football category.[15]

As part of their uniform, players wear shirts called guernseys, often referred to colloquially as 'jumpers. Guernseys are similar to basketball shirts, but of a more robust design and tight fit. In the early period of the game's development players often wore sleeveless lace-up tops which gradually disappeared between the 1960s and early 1980s. A few players choose to wear a long sleeved variation of the modern guernsey design. Players wore full length pants, before adopting shorts in the 1920s. Tight-fitting shorts were a notable fashion trend in most leagues in the 1980s and some players began to wear hamstring warmers. A brief experiment with lycra by the AFL in the State of Origin series was quickly abandoned for more traditional wear3. Long socks (football socks) are compulsory and boots with moulded cleats or studs for gripping the ground are worn (screw-ins have been banned from most leagues since the 1990s). Some players wear headbands or hair ties to keep the hair out of their faces when playing, though this is rare. Players will sometimes wear arm bands around their mid biceps and triceps, typically of electrical tape, in honour or in memoriam of someone related to the player or their club who recently died.

Traditionally, umpires have worn white and were sometimes referred to as "white maggots"[18] amongst supporters. AFL umpires now wear bright colours to also avoid clashes with the player guernseys and AFL goal umpires now wear t-shirts and caps, rather than the traditional white coat and broad brimmed hat (similar to what was worn by many cricket umpires) which they wore before the 1990s.

Cheersquads at Australian rules football matches behind the goals wave giant Pom-pons or floggers to signify a goal

Meat pies are a tradition at Australian football games.

Typical supporter wear includes the team scarf and sometimes beanie (particularly in cooler climates) in the colours of the team. Team guernseys are also worn by supporters. Team flags are sometimes flown by supporters at the start of a game, when a goal is scored, and when their team wins.

Before AFL matches, it is traditional for teams to run through a crêpe paper banner constructed by the cheersquads of each team. These often feature messages and slogans for the team in the context of the match, such as congratulating a player on a landmark number of games and more recently also sponsorship messages. The banners and sometimes also streamers are used in important local football matches such as finals. Some players are superstitious about running through the banner. As players run through the banners, the team's club song is always played. The winning clubs song is also played at the end of each match.

Australian rules supporters are said to "barrack" for their team. Though other cultures have had an influence at various points in its history, Australian football tends to have different atmosphere to sports like soccer and American football. Partly due to Australian culture, Australian rules spectators are generally more solitary animals. Despite loud shouting and arguing, crowd violence is rare. With the exception of small official cheersquads, spectators at Aussie Rules matches will rarely engage in support for their teams with organised chants, and there is often no segregation between fans. Instead, each individual spectator will most often shout their own support using the nickname of their team i.e. "Carn the Crows !" or "Carn the Maggies", or after goals perform simple chants such as "Ess-en-don! (clap-clap-clap)" or "Freo! Freo!". In contrast, cheersquads are highly organised, have their own rituals and almost always congregate behind the goals during games. The nature of the sport reflects this method of supporting. While some sports such as English or American football may involve lull periods where large chants reverberate around the ground, Australian rules football is played at a constant, frenetic pace, often leaving the crowd too immersed to take part in 'soccer style' chants. Most professional clubs have official cheersquads which will sometimes wave enormous coloured pompoms known as floggers after the umpire has signalled a goal. American style cheerleading is very rare.[19]

Meat pies, beer and chiko rolls are popular consumables (sometimes noted as a tradition) for supporters at Australian rules matches. At AFL matches mobile vendors walk around the ground selling such pies, yelling out the well-known call of "hot pies, cold drinks!"

At AAMI Stadium in Adelaide; it is tradition to have a barbecue outside the stadium, in the carpark. Many families will bring their barbecues with them. This is particularly popular during the Sunday afternoon matches.

At the end of the match, it is traditional for a pitch invasion to occur. Supporters run onto the field to celebrate the game and play games of kick-to-kick with their families. In many suburban and country games, this also happens during quarter and half-time breaks. In the AFL in recent years, this tradition has been more strictly controlled with security guards to ensure that players and officials can safely leave the ground. At the largest AFL grounds, this tradition has been banned completely, to protect the surface, much to the discontent of fans. But most smaller regional & interstate grounds (Simonds Stadium & Sydney Showground Stadium, for example) still allow fans onto the field after the game. Sometimes a mid-game pitch invasion is expected for various highly anticipated landmark achievements (such as a player kicking a record number of goals).

Reading the AFL Record and recording the goals kicked by players alongside the team lists is also commonly done by spectators.

On-field assault has historically been socially tolerated in Australia, but, in recent years, this has changed with some players being charged by police for their on-field actions, including a recent jailing in Victoria[31] and the much publicized case involving VFL player Leigh Matthews which ended the public perception that on-field football assaults are somehow legal.[32] League penalties for such actions have also generally increased in recent years[33] and overall violence has decreased over time.[34]

Violence has also affected the International Rules Series, with the Irish team objecting to the level of violence tolerated by Australia.