Australian rules football has had a significant impact on popular culture in its native Australia, capturing the imagination of Australian film, art, music, television and literature.

Postage

Australian rules is featured on several Australian (and international) postage stamps and postcards, including: 1974 – 7-cent stamp featuring players in a marking contest 1984 – Ausipex Antigua and Barbuda $5 stamp 1989 – 3-cent Australian sports stamp 1996 – 45-cent Centenary of the AFL series circulated in 1996 featuring the 16 AFL teams of the day 2008 – 50-cent 150 years of Australian Football depicting the first match 2009 – 55-cent "Let's Get Active" postage stamp also features a child kicking an Australian Rules ball 2012 – Australian Legends of Football, featuring Ron Barassi and Gary Ablett Jr

Literature Barry Oakley's satiric football novel A Salute to the Great McCarthy was published in 1970.

Crime novelist Kerry Greenwood wrote the 1991 short story The Vanishing of Jock McHale's Hat.

Alan Wearne's 1997 novel Kicking in Danger is about an Essendon player turned private eye who specialises in football-related cases.McCann, Andrew. Writing the Everyday: Australian Literature and the Limits of Suburbia. University of Queensland Press, 1998. , pp. 131–132. Football plays a major role in the 1998 novel Deadly, Unna? by Phillip Gwynne. The Call (1998), written by Martin Flanagan, is a semi-fictional account of football pioneer Tom Wills. Set during the 1970s, the 1999 novel Saturday Afternoon Fever by comedian Matthew Hardy follows a boy on weekend trips to VFL games, specifically to see his hero, St Kilda's Trevor Barker. Tony Wilson's debut novel Players (2005) satirises the relationship between football and the media. In 2012, Paul D. Carter won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for his debut novel Eleven Seasons, a coming-of-age story about a teenager and the role football plays in shaping his identity.Westwood, Matthew (27 April 2012). "Paul D. Carter's novel Eleven Seasons wins The Australian Vogel's Literary Award", The Australian. Retrieved on 8 July 2012.

Children's books In 2002, Felice Arena and former AFL star Garry Lyon co-wrote the first of many children's books in the Specky Magee series. Other footballers have released football-themed children's books, including Dwayne Russell with Jackson's Goal and Brendan Fevola with The Best Game Ever.

Michael Wagner's Maxx Rumble Footy Series was published between 2004 and 2006.

I Want to Be a Footballer (2007) by field hockey Olympic medalist Sally Carbon follows a football fanatic from his first Auskick game.

Poetry

"A Friendly Game of Football" was published in Edward Dyson's first volume of poetry, Rhymes from the Mines and Other Lines, in 1896.Perkin, Corrie (15 March 2008). "Creative codes", The Australian. Retrieved 24 June 2012. Dyson also wrote football poems for Punch. C. J. Dennis wrote "The Barracker" in 1922.

Colin Thiele's 1966 poetry collection In Charcoal and Conte contains "The Oval Barracker". In Bruce Dawe's popular poem "Life Cycle" (1967), the passion Victorians have for football is portrayed, in a gently humorous tone, as a form of religious worship. Dawe describes the transcendent qualities of football in "The High Mark". The poem ends with a footballer falling "back to Earth"—a "guernseyed Icarus"."ABC Radio National – The Sports Factor Transcript – 12 March 1999" . Retrieved 24 June 2012. He returned to football with "Stripes and Colours (after Cesar Vallejo)" in 1993.

Hal Colebatch wrote the poem "Lines Written Upon Learning That a Man Had Had His Ashes Buried between the Goal-Posts of a Football Oval" (1973).Poetry, Reading the Game. Retrieved 12 June 2014.

Football is a recurring theme in Mark O'Connor's poetry. He published numerous football poems in Quadrant, such as "Melbourne Visit: The Game" (1976) and "For Doug Wade" (1977). In 1991 he published "The 1990 AFL Grand Final in Beijing (for Manning Clark)".

Alan Wearne's 1976 poetry volume New Devil, New Parish begins with the football poem "Go On, Tell Me the Season Is Over". His 2002 poem "Bourke Street on Saturday Night" is written from the perspective of 19th-century Essendon footballer Charlie "Tracker" Forbes.

Philip Hodgins wrote "Country Football" in 1986. His 1990 book A Kick of the Footy contains nine poems on the theme of kicking a football, with titles such as "Flat Punt", "Snap Shot" and "Kicking into Danger".

Michael Leunig wrote "The Absolute Grand Final" in 1992.

Damian Balassone often employs football themes, such as in the poem "The Half-Back Flankers", which appears in the collection Strange Game in a Strange Land:

We strive to run the lines until the opposition breaks. Imagination is the name we give to our mistakes.

Theatre

Ballet

Many writers have seen artistic qualities in the physicality of Australian rules football. Historian Manning Clark described the game as "poetry in motion", and compared the aerobic athleticism of the players to that of ballet dancers.Clark, Manning (6 October 1962). "At the Footy", Nation. Ballet critic John Cargher devoted the introduction of his book Opera and Ballet in Australia (1977) to the aesthetic similarities between ballet and Australian football.Cargher, John. Opera and Ballet in Australia. Cassell Australia, 1977. , p. xi The sport has also captured the imagination of ballet dancers and choreographers, influencing major works in the canon of Australian ballet.

Robert Helpmann's 1964 ballet The Display, his first and most famous work for the Australian Ballet, relates the mating dance of the lyrebird to the masculine posturing of Australian men fighting over a girl at a bush picnic.Engledow, Sarah (September–November 2006). "Cultural kaleidoscope", Portrait (Issue 21). Retrieved 26 August 2012. Since Australia had a reputation for athletic prowess, Helpmann decided to make a feature of it, choreographing a football sequence of stylised leaps, marks, bounces and handballs.Brissenden, Alan. Australia Dances: Creating Australian Dance, 1945–1965. Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 2010. , pp. 68–70 Helpmann recruited Ron Barassi to coach the male dancers.

Tasmanian choreographer Graeme Murphy explored football in Beyond Twelve (1980). The autobiographical ballet traces a man's life from football-mad youth to adulthood as a renowned dancer. Football is referenced in the dances, costumes and stage designs, including goalposts which symbolically turn into ballet barres.

Plays and musicals All Saints' Day is a football-themed musical written by Don Battye and scored by Peter Pinne. The story centres on the St Kilda Football Club's fight for the premiership with subplots involving supporters and a Miss Mascot competition. The musical premiered in 1960 at the National Theatre in St Kilda.

And The Big Men Fly is a football farce in the Australian tall tale tradition, written by Alan Hopgood in 1963. The play's title comes from a phrase used to describe ruckmen contesting a ball-up.Hunt, Paula; Manton, Glenn. Mongrel Punts and Hard Ball Gets: An A-Z of Footy Speak. Melbourne: Red Dog Books, 2006. , p. 19 Its hero is Achilles Jones ("Acky"), a simple farmhand from Manangatang with "the body of a Greek god" and the ability to kick a bag of wheat ten yards with his bare feet. Lured down to Melbourne to play for an ailing VFL club, Acky is hailed as their greatest player, single-handedly winning matches when roused by made-up stories to make him "fighting mad".Hutton, Geoffrey (13 June 1963). "Football Was Never So Funny", The Age.

Goodbye Ted, co-authored in 1975 by Jack Hibberd and John Timlin, employs football language in a testimonial to a retiring footballer for larrikin humour and sexual innuendo.Fotheringham, Richard. Sport in Australian Drama. Cambridge University Press, 1992. , p. 203 In a foreword to the play, academic Don Watson notes that "Goodybye Ted is likely, and was probably calculated, to offend".Watson, Don. Goodbye Ted. Melbourne: Yackandandah, 1983. , p. iii

The Club was written by David Williamson in 1977. Williamson revisited football with the 2012 play Managing Carmen.

Themes of football under threat from corporatism are explored in Barry Dickins' Royboys (1987). The play follows the battling Nobles, a working-class family of "Royboys" (Fitzroy supporters) who struggle to save their club from being renamed "Fitzaki" and relocated to Japan.

Comedian Damian Callinan's 2000 one man play Sportsman's Night was inspired by the real life events of a regional football club banned by their local league for on and off field violence. Callinan revisited the dysfunctional Bodgy Creek Football Club in the 2010 sequel The Merger.Cazaly, Ciannon (28 March 2010). "Review: Damian Callinan – The Merger: Sportsman's Night 2", The Footy Almanac. Retrieved 23 June 2012. A feature film version was produced in 2018, accompanied by the Bodgy Creek Football Club podcast, and then in 2020 the Bodgy Creek Community Podcast, which included regular updates on Caxton Valley League games.

Holding the Man (2006) is named after the Australian football infringement. It is based on Timothy Conigrave's 1995 autobiography, and was adapted for the stage by Tommy Murphy. It tells the story of Conigrave's love affair with John Caleo, a fellow student at Melbourne's Xavier College and captain of the school football team. A film adaptation was released in 2015.

Glenn Manton's comedy show The Spray (2008) satirises AFL coaching methods.Vanderwert, Tessie (14 April 2008). "The Spray", The Age. Retrieved 9 September 2014.

The lives of several real-life footballers have been dramatised on stage. The Call (2004) is an adaptation by Bruce Myles of Martin Flanagan's 1996 novel of the same name. With football-inspired choreography by Koori dancers, the play explores the life of football pioneer Tom Wills and his relationship with aborigines.Thomson, Helen (19 October 2004). "The Call", The Age. Retrieved 24 March 2013. Krakouer! depicts the rise of Indigenous footballing brothers Jim and Phil Krakouer. It was developed by playwright Reg Cribb in 2009 from Sean Gorman's 2005 novel Brotherboys.

Music

Anthems and novelty songs Many songs inspired by the game have become anthems of the game. Jack O'Hagan wrote "Our Aussie Game" in 1949.Kneebone, Harry (4 July 1949). "Football Song", The Advertiser. Retrieved 22 June 2014. Mike Brady's 1979 hit "Up There Cazaly" went on to become Australia's highest selling single. Brady built on its success with "One Day in September" (1980) and numerous other football-themed songs. In 1996, singer-songwriter Kevin Johnson reworked his 1973 hit "Rock and Roll" as "Aussie Rules (I Thank You for the Best Years of Our Lives)". It was the official AFL Centenary song. Models member James Freud performed "One Tony Lockett", an ode to Tony Lockett, at the SCG,Halliday, Claire (27 August 2002). "How James Freud survived rock and roll", The Sun-Herald. Retrieved 26 June 2012. and released Today's Legends of AFL Football as James Freud and the Reserves.