Sport in New South Wales describes participation in and attendance at organised sports events in the state of New South Wales in Australia. Sport forms an integral part of the culture of the state.
New South Wales has attracted many international multi-sport events including the 2000 Summer Olympics, held in Sydney. There are many professional sporting teams in New South Wales. The biggest sport in the state by a wide margin is rugby league, in which the state has 10 professional clubs in the National Rugby League. Other popular spectator sports include rugby union, cricket, Australian rules football and soccer. In terms of participation, the most popular sports in the state are netball, tennis, soccer, rugby league and touch football.
Rugby league
Sydneysiders view rugby league football – usually called football, footy or simply league – as a sporting tradition within the city. This stems back from the earlier colonial days of the city when the city and its culture were largely dictated by wealthy Englishmen who traditionally played and were supporters of the Rugby code of football, which was largely advertised and passed on to the people of Sydney, including the working class who in back in England largely played soccer. In the early 1900s some Rugby footballers started to agitate to receive match payments. There was widespread disagreement as to whether or not this should happen. The working class strongly believed it was a good idea and that the players should at least share in some of the money which was filling the coffers of the governing body, whilst the middle class were more hesitant to do so. However, the Rugby Football Union would not countenance payments of any sort, even 'broken time' payments for a player whilst an injury made him unable to work was deemed the 'thin edge of the wedge' for professionalism. This resulted in a split similar to what had occurred in England, and the working class formed their own competition, the Rugby League, which followed the same rules as the equivalent breakaway competition in England. The game quickly grew a working-class following, and has been a Sydney tradition ever since. Rugby league is the most attended and viewed sport in the state by a wide margin.
The headquarters of the Australian Rugby League and National Rugby League (NRL) are in Sydney, which is home to nine of the 17 National Rugby League (NRL) football clubs (Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks, Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles, Parramatta Eels, Penrith Panthers, South Sydney Rabbitohs, Sydney Roosters and Wests Tigers), as well as being the northern home of the St George Illawarra Dragons, which is half-based in Wollongong. A tenth team, the Newcastle Knights are located in Newcastle.
The premier state-level league is the New South Wales Cup, involving reserve teams from NSW and Canberra based NRL clubs as well as the first teams from other clubs. Country football is overseen by the New South Wales Country Rugby League. Annual matches between City vs Country Origin teams are held.
The annual State of Origin series between the New South Wales Blues and the Queensland Maroons is a popular sporting event in NSW. Sydney has hosted many State of Origin matches since the series began in 1980. The three-game series are held in Sydney and Brisbane with the first and third games in one city and the second in the other. These rotate every year, so if two games are played in Sydney one year, then those games are played in Brisbane the next.
Rugby union
Rugby Union was the dominant winter sport prior to the arrival of rugby league. Rugby union commenced in 1870 in Sydney as a club competition with the Wallaroo FC, Sydney University FC, colleges and others. Rugby union is regarded as a middle-class game and is played in many of Sydney's top private schools.
Sydney has a local club rugby union competition (the Shute Shield), and a Super Rugby team the NSW Waratahs, who play their games in the city and represent the entire state of New South Wales. They were represented in the defunct Australian Rugby Championship by Sydney Fleet, Western Sydney Rams and Central Coast Rays. The National Rugby Championship has four NSW teams: Sydney Stars, Greater Sydney Rams, North Harbour Rays and NSW Country Eagles.
The Australian Rugby Union headquarters are located in Moore Park in Sydney. The Waratahs play out of the Sydney Football Stadium, and when in Sydney the Wallabies play out of Stadium Australia.
The New South Wales Waratahs won the Super Rugby title in 2014 in front of a record crowd at Stadium Australia.
Cricket
Cricket is one of the most popular sports in New South Wales. The NSW Blues are by far the most successful domestic cricket side in Australia having won the First-class competition 44 times and the One-Day Domestic cup nine times. They occasionally play first-class matches against touring International sides. New South Wales have played teams representing every Test-playing nation bar Bangladesh. They have provided the Australian Test and One Day International teams with some of the finest players ever to have graced the game of cricket, the most notable of them being Sir Don Bradman, Steve Waugh, Brett Lee, Glenn McGrath and many others. The current NSW Blues team's main home ground is the Sydney Cricket Ground. In the Twenty20 Big Bash League and Women's Big Bash League, the state is represented by the Sydney Sixers, playing at the Sydney Cricket Ground and the Sydney Thunder, playing at the Sydney Showground.
Soccer
Whilst having a strong sporting tradition in the field of Rugby League, Sydney also has a long and strong tradition in soccer. Early soccer clubs in Sydney were relatively small, and did not have very large followings, and like the general population of Sydney in the late 1800s the clubs were largely English in nature, but when the Australian government began its immigration policy in years closely following World War II, many immigrants left Europe in search of new homes in Sydney, and Australia in general. These migrant groups who were subject to racism from the existing population took it upon themselves to found their own soccer clubs, celebrating their particular ethnic communities. The three largest such clubs were founded by the three largest post war immigration groups respectively, they are: Marconi Stallions Football Club (Italian), Sydney Olympic Football Club (Greek), and Sydney United Football Club (Croatian). Along with these larger clubs, there are also many smaller clubs formed by ethnic groups, who also bare suburban names, such as Bankstown City Lions Football Club (Macedonian), Bonnyrigg White Eagles (Serbian), Parramatta Eagles (Maltese), and St. George Saints Football Club (Hungarian). These "ethnic" clubs soon began to dominate soccer in Sydney, drawing large crowd support from their given ethnic groups, and having their fair share of on field success too.
In the late 1980s there was a substantial rise in soccer hooliganism in Sydney as was the case all around the world, but in Sydney, however, it was tainted further by racism which was caused by ethnic affiliations which the majority of the larger Sydney clubs had. This was also coupled with a steady decline in crowd numbers over the years, partly due to violence, partly due to the falling standard of play, but also largely because the clubs were not broadening their supporter bases. For example, Sydney United's support had not grown beyond Sydney's Croatian community, therefore the sport was not capitalising on the growing multiculturalism of the city, now becoming home to many new migrant communities from Arabic and Asian cultures, which to some may be seen as ironic because multiculturalism as well as the fact that the code played all over the world is often seen to be soccer's strongest asset. In an effort to fix these issues facing the game, Football Australia embarked upon "de-ethnicising" soccer, clubs with very strong links to ethnic groups were made to sever links with their traditional supporter bases and broaden their horizons, new clubs were founded and brought into the league such as Parramatta Power and Northern Spirit who did not have ethnic associations in a bid to attract a multicultural fan base. This attempt failed miserably, new clubs failed to attract a following and old clubs were not at all "de-ethnicised".
In 2005 a review of the game was carried out and it was decided that for the game to move forward in Sydney, and around Australia, some drastic changes would have to be made. A new club was founded in Sydney called Sydney FC, and they were to be based in central Sydney as opposed to being based at a small suburban stadium, and were founded specifically to attract a multicultural following. They were entered in a new league to be known as the A-League, this would act as the show piece national competition, contested by similarly formed clubs from other large cities around Australia. There would be no form of relegation or promotion between the a-league and the rest of the counties competitions, and the previous national league would revert to its original form in state-based competitions, which is where clubs such as the for mentioned ethnic clubs continue to play. In the first 6 years of their existence, Sydney FC have been relatively successful building up a solid support base of around 10,000 members, and sometimes attracting crowds of up to 40,000, which is admirable considering the youth of the club. The new system has not been without its flaws for Sydney soccer, however – many of the great clubs, and the largest in the city, are unable to win a national championship, nor are they able to qualify for the Asian Champions League, and a large section of the Greater Sydney Area is simply unable to access this new club due to the geographic size of the city. Change is, however, afoot, as a national cup competition is to be reintroduced in 2012 with the winner qualifying for the champions league, and the imminent foundation of a second new multicultural club in Sydney's sprawling western suburbs due to begin playing matches within two years.
Outside Sydney, soccer has a similar history in the states larger regional cities (albeit on a smaller scale), and similar multicultural clubs have been formed such as: Newcastle Jets and Central Coast Mariners who both play in the A-league, and South Coast Wolves Football Club who play in the New South Wales premier league alongside many of Sydney's ethnic clubs; however, there have been calls for them to be elevated into the A-league, and it is expected that they eventually will be.
Basketball
The Sydney Kings and Illawarra Hawks are the state's representatives in the National Basketball League (NBL), Australia's premier Men's basketball competition. The Kings won three consecutive premierships in 2002–03, 2003–04 and 2004–05, while the Hawks won in 2001. The Sydney Kings play their home games at the Sydney SuperDome in Sydney while the Illawarra Hawks play home games at Wollongong Entertainment Centre in Wollongong, the Illawarra's commercial centre.
The next level below the NBL Championship is NBL1, New South Wales will be represented as the East conference from 2022 onward. This conference will be made of select teams from the Waratah League, the current premier league for clubs in New South Wales. NBL1 and Waratah League have Men's and Women's competitions.
The Sydney Uni Flames are a professional women's side who play in the Women's National Basketball League.
Australian rules football