Barassi Line
[5] It divides New South Wales, with rugby league dominating in the state's eastern population centres but enjoying less popularity in the southwest and west; the Riverina region and western mining city of Broken Hill both fall on the Australian rules football side.
He believed in spreading the code of Australian rules football around the nation with an evangelical zeal, and became coach and major supporter of the relocated Sydney Swans.
The demise of Australian rules in Sydney began in 1869 when the largest schools, under pressure from the local media, switched to rugby.
[20] Intercolonial rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne was by far the strongest with the Victorian colony surpassing it as Australia's most prominent city just a decade after its separation.
However Victorian rules began to increase its southern footprint with South Australia and Tasmania in the late 1870s, adopted the code to facilitate through representative matches against Victoria.
[21] Queensland followed Sydney in 1884 when the colony's largest schools there voted to switch to rugby, causing the collapse of the code by there by the end of that decade.
[22] By the 1890s, Australian rules was extinct in Sydney and Brisbane with rugby spreading virtually unopposed throughout the respective colonies of New South Wales and Queensland.
Australian rules experienced a national resurgence at the turn of the century however Rugby League's introduction in 1908 ushered in professionalism which after World War I firmly established the code over rugby union in Sydney and Brisbane respectively, with the governing bodies assisting to spread this code through the major cities to the remote areas of the state mainly through school football.
However, its current composition reflects association football's participation and growth per capita, which is by far strongest in the east (where it faces less competition with Australian rules).
[29] The Barassi Line is symbolically marked on Federation Way between the towns of Corowa and Wahgunyah near the New South Wales—Victoria state border at the Murray River.
Two sets of Australian rules football goal posts are aligned diagonally on either side of the road, with a sign located nearby explaining the site.
A major reason for the expansion into these non-traditional areas has been to increase both the number of games played each week, and the potential television audience.
Barassi's prophecy of a national Australian rules football league with four teams in New South Wales and Queensland has since been fulfilled with the establishment of Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney in 2011 and 2012 respectively.
[42][43] In 2012, the Greater Western Sydney Giants signed a 10-year deal with the ACT Government worth $23 million, which resulted in the club playing four home games in Canberra each season.
[47] According to Tweedie's 2022 study, the ACT remains behind the Barassi Line,[6] though participation has increased substantially since 2016 and GWS sold out three successive games during the 2024 AFL season.
The club endured limited success and a series of wooden spoons in their first decade in Sydney before turning a corner in the mid-1990s, culminating in premierships in 2005 and 2012.
Excluding a period of privatisation, despite significant loans and writedowns to the club, the league declared the Sydney Swans insolvent in 1984 and again in 1988.
In addition to promoting the Swans, the AFL attempted to use Auskick participation as a tool to increase awareness in the Sydney market by introducing a generation of children to the sport; however, the success of this strategy has been criticised.
[61] Despite a grand final appearance in 2019, the club's Sydney audience failed to grow,[61] especially among working class rugby league fans.
In addition to the growth of the game in Sydney, this grassroots expansion has contributed to the Barassi Line moving slightly further north of the border.
[63] However, the long campaign to lift the sport's popularity in Sydney and New South Wales has been hindered by deep rooted cultural barriers, which even an Australian Senate inquiry has described as insurmountable.
The Brisbane Bears were founded as the VFL's first privately owned expansion team in 1986, initially based on the Gold Coast.
It suffered enormously with the introduction of the Brisbane Broncos, a rugby league expansion club based in the state's capital specifically created to deny the Bears and the VFL a market.
Poor support for the club in both Gold Coast and Brisbane saw it run into financial difficulties despite significant AFL subsidies and concessions.
[71] The Lions and Suns generally only receive support from the Queensland public when they are performing well, and as such require significant concessions from the AFL to remain viable.
[10] In 2023, the Far North Queensland city of Cairns entered an official bid for the AFL's 20th license with a team based out of a redeveloped Cazaly's Stadium, vying with a Darwin-based club for entry by 2030.
[82][83][84][85][86] Commissioner chairman Peter V'landys signalled that the competition was focused on creating a second team in Brisbane (which became the Dolphins), instead of investing money into AFL states such as Western Australia, which "don't have a huge audience" for rugby league.
[87] "Perth are absolutely on our hit list for expansion and it’s sooner rather than later..." Melbourne remains the sole NRL club on the other side of the line.
[93] The following year, the ARU sought to create a national domestic competition, launching the Australian Rugby Championship (ARC).
The study found: Results indicated demarcation of viewer loyalty to each code based on geographic boundaries, consistent with the existing notion of "the Barassi line".
