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The "Barassi Line" is a term which was first used by Ian Turner in his "1978 Ron Barassi Memorial Lecture"〔Referenced in 〕 to refer to an imagined line in Australia which divides areas where Australian rules football is the dominant winter code of football from those where rugby league and rugby union, are the most popular. Overall attendance rates, media coverage and participation are heavily skewed in favour of each sport in its traditional areas and against the sport from the opposite side of the line.〔(4174.0 - Sports Attendance, Australia, 2005-06 ); Australian Bureau of Statistics; 25 January 2007: ''Notably, the states and territories which had low attendance rates for rugby league had the highest attendance rates for Australian rules football.''〕 Despite Australia's relatively homogeneous culture, the dichotomy existing in the country's sporting culture as represented by the line has endured since the founding of Australian rules football in the 1850s. Australian rules football is the most popular football code played to the west and south of the line, with centres in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, while rugby league and rugby union are more popular on the other side, with centres in Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane. Each side represents roughly half of the Australian population, due to the concentration of population on the east coast. At the time the term was first used, there were no professional teams or leagues located on each code's opposite side of the line. However, in the years since, the Australian Football League (AFL) in Australian rules football and the National Rugby League (NRL) in rugby league have expanded their domestic competitions to include teams from both sides of the line. In addition, the multinational body SANZAR, which organises the Super Rugby competition in rugby union, has expanded its Australian presence on the opposite side of the line. The line runs from the Northern Territory-Queensland border, south through Birdsville, Queensland, through southern New South Wales north of the Riverina, through Canberra and on to the Pacific Ocean at Cape Howe on the border of New South Wales and Victoria. The exact location of the division may be disputed and the stylised straight line is not particularly accurate in representing the division. No areas of Queensland favour Australian rules football over rugby league and, in the Riverina area in southern New South Wales, both codes vie for dominance. In the Canberra area, there is one professional team playing rugby union, the Brumbies, and one rugby league team, the Canberra Raiders, whereas there is no AFL side in Canberra, and only a few matches are played there each year, even though many Australian rules football teams compete in Canberra at levels lower than the AFL. Other major team sports in Australia, such as cricket, basketball, netball, field hockey and soccer have less variation in their popularity by location.〔(Cat. No. 4174.0 2005-06 Sports Attendance, Australia, Table 6. Persons Attending Main Sports, By State Or Territory )〕 ==Origin== The Ron Barassi Memorial Lecture was a series of lectures given between 1966 and 1978 by Ian Turner, a professor of history at Monash University, that were named after Ron Barassi, Sr..〔D. B. Waterson, (Turner, Ian Alexander Hamilton (1922 - 1978) ), ''Australian Dictionary of Biography'', Volume 16, Melbourne University Press, 2002, pp 424-425.〕 Barassi played a number of Australian rules football games for Melbourne in the Victorian Football League (VFL) before enlisting to fight in World War II and subsequently dying from shrapnel wounds. The Barassi Line itself was named after Ron Barassi, the former Barassi's son, who was a star player for Melbourne and Carlton and a premiership-winning coach with Carlton and North Melbourne. 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. He foresaw a time when Australian rules football clubs from around Australia, including up to four from New South Wales and Queensland, would play in a national football league with only a handful of them based in Melbourne, but his prognostications were largely ridiculed at the time.〔Hess, Rob and Nicholson, Matthew. Beyond the Barassi Line: The Origins and Diffusion of Football Codes in Australia〕 Primarily due to the distances involved, the leagues of Australian rules football and rugby league were based around city competitions, not inter-city national leagues as is the case in most countries. Each major city had one league as the highest profile with the greatest interest and attendance. In Sydney and Brisbane, the most followed competitions were rugby league's New South Wales Rugby Football League and Brisbane Rugby League premiership. In Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Darwin, the Australian rules football leagues of the Victorian Football League, South Australian National Football League, West Australian Football League and Northern Territory Football League respectively were the most popular. Tasmania had three separate leagues; the Tasmanian Australian National Football League, Northern Tasmanian Football Association and North West Football Union. In most cities, the non-dominant sport had amateur leagues that operated for many years. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Barassi Line」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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