Australian football

According to the experts, the sport was created in the XIX century. It is hard to tell the exact date but first recorded matches of Footy happened in 1859 in Melbourne, Victoria. Australian football is thought to be a combination of several kinds of sports, including: football, rugby and Gaelic football. Interesting is the fact that footy was invented in unusual conditions. Although the first people who played the sport were mostly school students, It is thought that this discipline was created as an addition to cricket games. The purpose of footy was to maintain good shape of cricket players when the season was over due to the Australian climate (“ the wet season”).

This can be the reason why the australian football matches are played at modified cricket stadiums. At the end of the XIX century the Australian football was a major sport in several states of the country. A huge popularity of footy is especially observed in Victoria, Tasmania as wel as Southern and Western Australia. The creation of the Victorian Football League, the first league of Australian football, which existed with such name for 103 years, dates back to the 1897. Later on, after a merger with other leagues resulted in creation of the Australian football league (AFL).

The team consists of 22 players with only 18 players being at the field at one time (other 4 players are at the dugout). Substitutions are made in a double form and can be done at any time and without any announcement. Footy is an extremely dynamic, contact game in which a player who have the ball can be attacked with grips, replaying him or by pushing him frontally or from the sides. Pushing in the back, strikes, attacks over the shoulders and lower the knees as well as any unfair moves are prohibited. In Australian football you can block all players in a range of 5 meters from the player possessing the ball. The ball which slightly differs from the one used in rugby can be passed in any direction by kicking it or a direct pass in the hands of another player. You cannot throw the ball.

The AFL season begins in March and ends in September. It is divided into two parts: the regular season and the play-offs. In the regular season everybody play at least one match with each other (often two). If the match is played between teams from different states then the teams play only once and if it is played between teams from the same state that means they meet twice. 8 best teams of the regular season advance into the play-offs. The upper four teams have the advantage as they play the other 4 with the best team of the regular season playing the eight team in the table and so on. After the knock-out phase is done there are two teams left. They play in the Big Finale of the League, which is hosted at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, a stadium that can seat even 100 000 spectators.

Points acknowledgement principles

A goal – in other words a major score is a when you kick the ball into the rival’s gate between the barbells while the it doesn’t touch the players during the kick. You can get 6 points for that.

A behind – is an action for which 1 point is given on either of the following conditions:

• kicking the ball into the side gate.
• direct hit in the stand of central gate.
• throw-in of the ball into any gate.
• connection to the ball.

When one of the teams gets 6 points the referee orders to start the game from the midfield. If a team gets 1 point of behind, the competitor starts the game from his half of the field. The match of the Australian football consists of 4 quarters, each lasting for 20 minutes. During the breaks the match time is stopped.

The popularity of this discipline in Australia can be connected with both British origin of most of the australians and with their innate need for adrenaline. That is why they modified elements of British sports like cricket or rugby, added their unique emotions and created something new. Australian football has very important social spect, every state has a team that represents the group of people living there. Matches are a great way to feel close to and interact with other people, whcih is very important in this often separated by thousands of miles society. Australia alongside Great Britain is one of the biggest bookmaking markets in the world and betting on Australian football is very popular and profitable.

• Australian football is the third sport as for the number of spectators on stadiums in the world. Average attendance of AFL matches is about 40 thousand people.
• Australian football is not that popular in some states, with rugby and cricket being more popular sports.
• AFL matches involve even 9 referees including a technical referee controlling the game time.
• In average, players run about 20-22 km in a match, for comparison, in football it is 9 km.

Different types of awards are given yearly in AFL:

1. AFL Norm Smith Medal – an award for the best player of the Grand Final.
2. AFL Brownlow Medal – an award for the best player of AFL main season.
3. AFL Coleman Medal – an award for the player who scores the biggest number of goals in a season.
4. ‘Wooden Spoon’ – an unofficial, ironic ‘award’ for the worst team of a season.

• Outright stakes – is a game variant which consists of prediction of the team that wins the regular season.
• Winner betting – bet on prediction of which team will win in the competition.
• Margin betting – is a prediction of the number of points which are earned by hosts and guests during the whole match. The limits are set in the following way: 0-12 points, 13-36 points , 36-60 points, 61-72 points.
• H2H (head-to-head) bet – is a type of bet in which pairs of players in a match are created and you have to guess who of them will play better in a match (tackles, points).
• The player of the match – a bet for the best player of the match
• First Team Score – a bet for the first team to earn points.
• First Kick Goal – a bet for the first points received by a kick
• Medal betting - is a kind of betting that involves choosing the winners of medals of the AFL.