Sport in Victoria

Australian rules football has a long history in Victoria, shown in this nineteenth-century junior football team from Geelong

In terms of both attendance and media coverage, Australian rules football is the most popular sport in the state. The participation rate of 4% is the third highest in the country with 223,999 players counted in 2004. Australian rules football originated in Melbourne in 1858. Ten of the eighteen Australian Football League clubs are based in Victoria, and the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) is held by many to be the spiritual home of the game. Victoria hosted the 2002, 2005 and 2008 Australian Football International Cup competitions.

Basketball has the highest participation rate in the state.[1][2][3] Melbourne United (previously Melbourne Tigers) is Victoria's sole representative in the National Basketball League (Australia), following the withdrawal of the South Dragons. They have won the championship 4 times, in 1993, 1997, 2005-2006 and 2007-2008. They currently play at State Netball and Hockey Centre affectionately known as "the cage". It is experiencing a boom participation rate and has more players in the state than any other sport.[4][5][6] Former premier, John Brumby has called for a second Melbourne team to be added to the league.[7]

Cricket at the MCG

Cricket is also popular in Victoria. The governing body for the sport is Cricket Victoria which administers the 1,182 cricket clubs and 112,000 registered cricketers in Victoria, and 62,774 children involved in school-based competition. The Victorian Bushrangers are the men's state team which competes in the KFC T20 Big Bash, the Sheffield Shield and the Ford Ranger Cup. Following an extended period of low attendances at Bushrangers home games, the 2009/10 season saw a string of record crowds for T20 Big Bash games at the MCG. Whilst attendances for international cricket games in Victoria have dropped in the past season, crowds for Sheffield Shield and Ford Ranger Cup matches are steadily growing. The Victorian Spirit are the women's state team which competes in the Women's National Cricket League.

Soccer in Victoria is governed by the Football Victoria. It is particularly popular among migrant communities and has one of the highest sporting participation level in the state (after basketball). Melbourne Victory FC and Melbourne City FC[8] (known until June 2014 as Melbourne Heart) and Western United are the state's 3 A-League teams.

The predominantly Australian rules football-dominated state of Victoria didn't play host to much rugby league football, which was traditionally a New South Wales and Queensland-based game during the 20th century. Some representative games were played in Melbourne to gauge public interest in the sport in the early 1990s and the crowds were encouraging.

Travel back a few years and you find that, in rugby league circles, Melbourne was viewed as a great, succulent peach ready for picking. Almost 90,000 people had turned up to the MCG in 1994 to watch NSW play Queensland in a State of Origin match. In a period where the robust sport was focused on expansion, Melbourne loomed as the obvious next frontier. Then the code imploded.

— The Sunday Age, 1999[9]

When the newly formed National Rugby League re-emerged in 1998, Melbourne Storm was part of the lineup of clubs. They have since become one of the most successful teams in the League and gained a significant following in their home state.[10]

Rugby league participation (0% in 2005 according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics) has grown significantly since 2006. Melbourne's television audience for the 2006 NRL Grand Final was higher than Sydney's.[11] There are 13 amateur clubs in the entire state according to the Victorian Rugby League[12] and development officers and professional teams have visited schools.

Melbourne hosted a match between Australia and England during the 2008 Rugby League World Cup, as well as the 2010 ANZAC Test, which attracted a capacity crowd at AAMI Park. Melbourne hosted the Australia v England match in the 2010 Four Nations Series.

Motor racing has its Australian roots in Melbourne. One of the earlier motor races was held on a horse racing venue in Melbourne, but organised motor racing as we know it today began with the first running of the Australian Grand Prix, held on a rectangular dirt road course on the streets of Phillip Island in 1928. The Grand Prix wandered across the country in subsequent decades but today is held as part of the Formula One World Drivers Championship on the streets of inner Melbourne around Albert Park Lake. A modern Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit hosts the Australian motorcycle Grand Prix. The state has more motor racing circuits than any other as well as providing the home base for more than half of the teams contesting the premier domestic motor racing series, V8 Supercar. Even New South Wales' signature motor race, the Bathurst 1000, has its roots in Victoria, having been first held as a 500-mile race at Phillip Island.

Netball is recognised as the largest female participation sport in Australia. In Victoria there are in excess of 105,000 registered participants, which does not include the tens of thousands of school children that participate in school netball programs annually.

Approximately 240 associations/groups affiliate with Netball Victoria on an annual basis. Affiliation provides access to netball events, programs and services as well as a pathway to State, National and International representation. Associations are geographically grouped into one of the 20 Regions, and then Regions are grouped into one of six Zones. 96% of the Netball Victoria membership is female. 55% of the membership resides in regional Victoria with the remaining 45% in the metropolitan suburbs in and around Melbourne. 62% of the Netball Victoria membership is aged seventeen (17) and under, with the majority of the remaining participants aged between eighteen and fifty. Victoria has a team in the ANZ Championship, the Melbourne Vixens.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2007), Victoria has very low rugby participation (less than 1%), dominated by amateur competition run by the Victorian Rugby Union, and participation in many private schools.[13] However, international rugby matches attract large attendances, (e.g. 2003 Rugby World Cup, and sevens at the 2006 Commonwealth Games).

The Melbourne Rebels represent Victoria in the professional Super Rugby competition. Their formation was long-awaited in the state, the Victorian Rugby Union having bid twice previously for a licence, the first time in 1995, losing to the ACT Brumbies, and the second time in 2005, losing to the Western Force. Their bid for the 15th licence was successful in 2010.