In New South Wales and its capital city Sydney, Australian rules football dates back to the 1860s colonial era, being the first and for a time the only code played. The club competition in Sydney first began in the 1880s and has since the early 1900s held a continuous existence. The sport is popular in the regional cities and towns of the state near the Victorian and South Australian borders— in the Riverina-Murray region (around the Murray River and Murrumbidgee Rivers) and in Broken Hill where it has a long history. These areas form part of an Australian cultural divide described as the Barassi Line. To the west of the line it is commonly known as "football" or "Australian Football" and to east of the line, it is promoted under the acronym "AFL" by the main development body AFL NSW/ACT. There are more than 15 regional leagues though some are run from other states, the highest profile are AFL Sydney and the Riverina Football Netball League. With 80,572 registered players, it has the third most of any jurisdiction.
The state is the sport's second largest audience with the Australian Football League (AFL) Premiership Season generating more than a million television viewers. Two clubs based in the state capital Sydney currently compete in the AFL and AFL Women's (AFLW): the Sydney Swans and the Greater Western Sydney Giants. The Swans in 1982 became the first professional Australian sporting team to move interstate, and entered the AFLW in Season 7 (2022). The Giants debuted in the 2012 AFL season and 2017 AFL Women's season and compete against the Swans in the Sydney Derby (also known as "The Battle of the Bridge").
The representative team, nicknamed the Blues, played interstate matches against other Australian states and Territories between 1881 and 1988. The Blues have a strong record, defeating every state and territory except South Australia. They have long standing rivalries with Victoria accounting for them in 1923, 1925, and in 1990 under State of Origin rules at the Sydney Cricket Ground, and Queensland which was evenly contested from 1884. WR 'Billy' McKoy holds the record for the number of representative caps for New South Wales with 31. Sydney hosted national carnivals in 1914, 1933, 1960 and 1974. The underage Blues also claimed Under 19 national championships in 1974 and 1975 as well as a Division 2 title in 1993.
Some of the greatest names in the sport hail from the state including its leading pioneers, cousins Tom Wills and H. C. A. Harrison, who were born there. Over 400 players have competed in the AFL including two Legends in the Australian Football Hall of Fame: Haydn Bunton Sr. and Jock McHale. The New South Wales born and raised player with the most AFL games and most AFL goals is Tom Hawkins with 359 games and 796 goals while Sophie Casey has the most AFLW games with 63, and Zarlie Goldsworthy has the most AFLW goals with 16.
History
First clubs and matches (1861–1868) The Federal Football Club is claimed to have been formed in Wagga Wagga in 1861, making it the oldest Australian rules football club outside of Victoria and the oldest football club of any code in New South Wales, however little else of the early history of the club now known as the Wagga Tigers is known. Its first recorded interclub matches did not appear for at least another decade.Almanac Footy: Bill Mohr – The Wizard from Wagga Wagga 10 November 2021
On 26 May 1865, calls were put out to form a Sydney Football Club (Sydney FC). The club was incorporated on 17 June 1865 with cricket administrator Richard Driver as its first president and up to 60 members, of whom were mostly cricketers. Driver was familiar with Victorian cricketer and football pioneer Tom Wills with their sporting paths overlapping many times between 1857 and 1865 in both Melbourne and Sydney. The Sydney FC played its first match shortly thereafter in Hyde Park, Sydney, and in August against the Sydney University FC. Meanwhile the Australian FC, an arm of the Australian Cricket Club, was also formed and played games that same winter.
At its first annual meeting on 8 May 1866, the Sydney FC confirmed its playing rules were the Victorian football rules and that it had received a challenge from the Melbourne FC wanting to travel north for inter-colonial matches. The Australian FC was also a follower of the Victorian rules.On 26 May 1866, the rules were published in Bells Life in Sydney. Both clubs failed to reappear in 1867.
In 1868, a new Sydney FC was founded also adopting the Victorian rules, citing their popularity in Melbourne as the main reason for the choice. Few details survive of their matches apart from one held against the 50th (Queen's Own) Regiment on 11 July 1868. Sydney journalists applauded the rising interest in Victorian rules, though they referred to it, without using its Melbourne name, in the broad "old English game of football" sense.
The Sydney University FC is often noted as "The Birthplace of Australian Rugby" in 1863; however, historical newspaper records show its first games were in 1865Hickie, Thomas V., A Sense of Union. The History of the Sydney University Football Club, 1998, and that it did not begin playing by rugby rules until 1870.
Unlike football in other colonies, early club football in Sydney struggled to take root. As was the case for the fledgling contemporary Brisbane Football Club in the Queensland colony, Sydney's clubs (unlike those of Melbourne and Adelaide in the colony of South Australia) struggled to recruit enough football players for organised matches. Without intercolonial competition and with few playing, newcomer clubs soon disbanded.Bell's Life in Sydney. 3 August 1867 The growing city of Newcastle, however defied the trend, revising the Rules of Football (the Victorian Rules), and publishing it in its press.
One of the first Sydney schools to adopt the Victorian code was Newington College in 1867 by its then headmaster and ex-Geelong FC player and vice-president George Metcalfe.A number of history sources refer to an 1869 match between Newington and Sydney University FC as the colony's first rugby game, however there are no contemporaneous sources verifying the game took place, nor under what rules. Rugby rebellion and the Southern Rugby Football Union ban (1870–1876)
While Victorian rules had been the only distinguishable football code played in the Sydney over the last half of the 1860s, at no time had it (or any other set of laws) established a firm foothold and permanent clubs, leaving the arrival of the rugby-dedicated Wallaroo FC in 1870 an open field. In 1874 the Wallaroos led the formation of the Southern Rugby Football Union (SRFU / now NSWRU) who adopted the rugby union playing laws of the London-based Rugby Football Union, as well as a by-law that each member (club or school) could only play games against another member, meaning any attempt to establish a Victorian rules club in Sydney was futile.
In the Riverina closer to Victoria however, clubs were able to somewhat survive it. The Albury Football Club (founded in 1876 under Victorian rules) did so by crossing the border to play against northern Victorian clubsA Brief History of Football in Wagga. The Riverina Weekender. 23 February 2013 though even it was all but defunct the following year, requiring resuscitation some time later. Other early northern Riverina clubs such as Wagga were left with little other option than to organise local scratch matches as most other clubs in the colony were adopting rugby. Calls from Victoria in May 1877 for intercolonial tests were dismissed by the SRFU in an effort to prevent the Victorian code from being promoted in Sydney.
Intercolonial football and establishment of competitions in the Riverina, Sydney, Newcastle and Broken Hill (1877–1893)
In June 1877, Sydney's Waratah Rugby Football Club (formed in 1873 but now defunct) accepted a challenge from Victoria's Carlton Football Club to reciprocal matches in their respective codes, and in doing so, risked expulsion from the union. The SRFU refused to sanction the match, and fearing the effect of promoting the Victorian code, fixtured a competing match at Parramatta. The match, hosted by Waratah, was played at the Albert Ground under rugby rules in front of 3,000 spectators—then the largest ever football crowd in Sydney—was won by Waratah 2–0. Defunct newspaper publication The Argus noted that the Victorians were not lacking in skills, just their knowledge of the game. The second match was played in front of a smaller crowd of about 1,500 at the Albert Ground with the result being Carlton 6–0. Among the best players were George Coulthard, who showed a particular prowess in both codes despite having never played rugby. When Waratah toured Victoria in July 1878, a crowd of 8,000 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground witnessed Carlton and Waratah draw scores in rugby, while a smaller crowd of 6,000 witnessed a surprise victory against Carlton by 2 goals in Victorian rules.
At the same time the Sydney University FC (rugby rules club) was advocating for the SRFU and its member clubs to change its rules and in effect switch codes to Australian rules.The following season in 1878 the University club negotiated with the Melbourne FC for a visit (which did not proceed) to Sydney to play Victorian rules games. The University club's continued agitation aided momentum towards establishing the rival code in Sydney.
By 1880, Waratah and other Sydney clubs began initiating proposed changes to rugby amid growing dissatisfaction over the game's rules. Rugby interests, particularly NSWRU officials from Wallaroo FC, repeatedly rejected suggestions to switch codes or even play intercolonial matches under alternating rules against Victoria despite the NSW Cricket association making its grounds available for the proposed matches. In response, the proponents of the Australian game, led by Harry Hedger and George Walker, formed the New South Wales Football Association (NSWFA) in 1880. One of the vice-presidents of the SRFU resigned from his position to take position on the newly formed NSWFA board.
Despite their support for change and Victorian rules, the Waratah and Sydney University clubs at first stood aloof from the new body, as the founding members were Sydney (the third club by that name) and East Sydney. In 1881, the first Australian rules game between NSW and Victoria was played in Sydney. The NSWFA only had a few clubs, including Waratah which switched codes in 1882. A splinter University club from the rugby club, the Sydney University Australian National Football Club also formed in 1887 to join the competition. From 1889, clubs competed for the Flanagan Cup. Despite this, the Sydney Rugby Football Union, seeing the new competition as a threat, enforced a strict ban on every one of its member clubs playing Victorian rules.Meanwhile, the city's private schools Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview and St Joseph's College, Hunters Hill started playing the code.
In the Riverina several clubs had formed prior to 1882 including two in Wagga and Albury and one in Narrandera however they initially struggled to coordinate with nearby clubs due to the SRFU ban. The first recorded match there was in 1881 between Federal (Wagga) and Albury Football Club in Wagga, just a year before the first rugby matches were held in the region. Local competition between clubs commenced in earnest in 1884 around Wagga Wagga which became the Wagga Football Association.