Australia national Australian rules football team

Australia
Union	Australian Football League
Nickname(s)	AFL Academy, All-Australian Team

Australia has named a senior Australian Football team, known as the All-Australian team team since 1947. This team, however has never officially played an international Australian rules football match. This is primarily because the country is so strong in the sport.

It has previously sent teams to play against Ireland's Gaelic Athletic Association in the hybrid code of International Rules Football as the Australia international rules football team (with the exception of the 2005 team which was handpicked) (this article is not about that team).

While the All-Australian team does not compete, the AFL Academy represents Australia at junior level competing annually against New Zealand. History has shown that more than two thirds of these players go on to professional careers at senior AFL level.^[1]

Australia also has a history of fielding Australian Football sides both officially and unofficially recognised to compete at amateur and junior levels tours against national sides from other countries including New Zealand, South Africa, Papua New Guinea and the United States. In addition, sides representing Indigenous Australia have competed internationally, including the Indigenous All-Stars against Papua New Guinea and the Flying Boomerangs.

High profile representatives include AFL Brownlow medallists Chris Judd, Patrick Dangerfield, Adam Cooney, several AFL club captains including Luke Hodge, Travis Boak, Trent Cotchin, Jack Viney, Jarryd Roughead, Shannon Hurn, Jarrad McVeigh, Marc Murphy, Joel Selwood, Steven May, Jack Ziebell, other AFL greats including Cyril Rioli, Brett Deledio and numerous All-Australian players.

Australia remains undefeated, although Papue New Guinea came within two goals of a historic win at Football Park in 1978 and New Zealand within a goal at Wellington Stadium in 2014.

History[]

Early in the spread of football codes across the globe, international tours and tests played a pivotal role. However from the sport's early days, although plans were tabled for tours to England, various leagues had lacked the resources and organisation to send tours overseas. H C A Harrison "Father of Australian Football" was a supporter of the idea of international matches against England and New Zealand, and in London in 1884, pitched playing under compromise rules, however the idea was rejected.^[2] The idea was made more difficult as prior to the Federation of Australia the Australian colonies could still not reach a consensus on the idea of fielding a national side.

Some teams did however toured and played matches in Australia against Australian sides, notably in 1888 and 1889, the British & Irish Lions and New Zealand Native team played matches against clubs in Australia but no recognised international tests. These tours were conditional on Australian leagues playing some matches under rugby rules to keep the competition fair. Generally games were won by the teams playing their own code and this led to the perception that the codes were by now too dissimilar for such matches to continue. Unlike the football codes with less players sending squads of 18 to 22 players on international tours would prove to be an expensive exercise and sharing the costs across multiple colonies would prove much more difficult than, for example, New South Wales sending a national rugby team.

Australasian Football Council rejects international matches[]

USA schoolboys vs Young Australia. Presidio of San Francisco. 1 October 1911 was supported by Western Australia but not sanctioned by the Australasian Football Council.

It wasn't until the formation of the national body, the Australasian Football Council in 1906 that the opportunity presented itself for funding and organisation for a national team. However representatives of the two strongest leagues, the Victorian Football League and South Australian Football League, in an effort to protect their primacy in Australia, lobbied the council to form a strict policy discouraging the game from being played overseas, allocated all funds to interstate representation, and none to international representation. In 1906 the council's policy became "one flag, one destiny, one football game" and chose to play all matches under an Australian flag, on Australian turf with an Australian manufactured ball.^[3] The first request for international tour came in 1906 from Australian rules football in South Africa,^[4] the AFC therefore replied that if it wanted to play against Australia, it would have to send a team to Australia.^[5] This was to become the council's default stance. New Zealand had only one representative on the council, and faced opposition from most of the Australian colonies. Though it was given permission to send a side to the 1908 Melbourne Carnival (which defeated Queensland and New South Wales) the AFC never fielded a national team against them.

Western Australia organised unsanctioned tours of the USA by Australian junior representative teams between 1911 and 1919 reciprocating young American tours of Australia from 1909, resulting in the first international match between the two countries in 1911 (though the teams were composed mostly of West Australians) and helping establish Australian rules football in the United States. For a country with less than a thousand players, USA's junior athletes proved highly competitive against the Australian sides. In 1912, Canada sent a junior touring side to Australia, however the tour was not recognised by the AFC and as such no composite Australian representative side was fielded against them. With the rapid growth in the United States, the AFC's delegate from Western Australia strongly argued for sanctioned tours to both the United States and Canada, however the governing body elected not to. The result was that most competitions outside Australia went into permanent recess by the end of the 1920s. In contrast, the top leagues in Australia were going professional and a widening gap in interstate representative matches would make it almost impossible for other countries to compete.

Australian Football World Tour and International Rules[]

In the 1960s, the focus would shift. A promotional tour, known as the Australian Football World Tour, took place in 1967, with matches played in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, though without any local players no international matches of Australian rules were played. This resulted in the first International Rules matches played between Australia and a touring County Meath Gaelic football team, Meath being the reigning All-Ireland senior football champions.^[6] The national side was known as the "Galahs". Ireland would maintain the VFL's primary international focus through to the 21st century though it was not officially endorsed by the AFC, support for the idea was continued by the VFL/AFL and later Australian Amateur Football Council.

1970s: First international matches[]

In the 1960s and 1970s, Australian rules was unexpectedly booming in the Pacific in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. While Nauru had been soundly defeated by PNG it was considered far too small a nation to field a competitive side against Australia. Papua New Guinea however with tens of thousands of players to draw from, had a fast moving and hard hitting side that was competitive against some of the VFL's strongest clubs, and was extremely determined to compete against Australia. In 1977 a Victorian U17 team travelled to Port Moresby and were almost defeated. PNG persevered and in 1978 sent a team to Adelaide, and in a historic match came close to beating Australia. However the Australian National Football Council withdrew its promise to admit PNG as a voting member, along with senior funding and plans to tour Papua New Guinea and the local competitions soon collapsed. This was in part due to the country's national sporting body withdrawing funding due to a lack of international competition. In turn this also left Australia with no opponent.

International Cup and IAFC[]

When the International Australian Football Council was formed in 1995 one of its aims was to 'establish and promote an official World Cup of Australian Football'. The initial proposal was for similar eligibility criteria to other football codes which would mean that it could draw the significant pool of Australians born overseas or with a parent or grandparent from the country they chose to represent. This would in turn reduce the logistical and financial burden on overseas clubs who would send their best players to top up the squads. At the time it was thought that 2008, being the 150th anniversary of the game, was the appropriate date. The idea of Australia eventually entering an amateur side was first proposed. In 1999 a proposal was received from the New Zealand Australian Football League (NZAFL), suggesting that the World Cup be brought forward to 2002.

An approach was then made to the national body, the AFL, asking for their support in staging the event. The AFL agreed on the basis that the event was renamed the "International Cup", that an Australian side would not compete and that there be strict eligibility criteria to exclude Australian players. In 2004, the AFL formed its own International Policy,^[7] pushed for the dissolution of the IAFC to became formally recognised as the world governing body for the sport. It took the International Cup over and put it under its development arm. The idea of an Australian team, even a development or amateur one, participating in the tournament was dismissed.

AIS-AFL Academy[]

Australia did not compete internationally at any recognised level until the AFL Commission in 1998 formed a 10 year partnership with the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) and the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), the AIS-AFL Academy, with national sports funding. The AIS junior development funding was contingent on international competition, which the AFL was able to satisfy through a junior International Rules Series against Ireland. The AIS funded scholarships to 30 17 year old players for a year based on their football performance as a 16 year old, their positive attitude to education and schooling and potential to play at professional AFL level.^[1] However with the GAA cancelling both the senior and junior series in 2006, the AFL had to find another opponent in order to continue to receive national sports funding.^[8] which it sought to capitalise on burgeoning Australian investment in Australian rules football in South Africa. Following some highly unevenly matched contests, the gap between the two countries drew comments from AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou the South Africans would be better suited to playing a game with a round ball (referring to International Rules but possibly also soccer). In 2011, the program expanded to include two squads^[9] however the AFL abandoned the South African program and sent a side on tour to Europe, but without playing any internationals. The Australian Instititue of Sport withdrew from the partnership in 2013 to focus on Olympics recognised sports.^[10] The National Australia Bank extended its Australian Football sponsorship to the AFL Academy to fill the gap left by the AIS. More than two thirds of all AIS-AFL representatives have gone on to play at senior AFL level.^[1]

AFL push into New Zealand[]

Triple AFL premiership player, All-Australian and AFL club captain Chris Johnson coached the side between 2012 and 2015

Triple AFL premiership player, All-Australian and AFL club captain Luke Power has coached the team since 2016

The AFL's partnership in New Zealand with Wellington Regional Stadium helped fill the gap left by the AIS and it began playing its development team against an open aged NZ sides. Competing as the AFL Academy (or Australia U17) an annual series of tours was established against New Zealand as part of a junior development pathway with AFL New Zealand. These were later extended to include women's matches however COVID 19 pandemic put international matches on hold.

At the end of 2018, the AFL put an end to overseas tours for its AFL Academy, which meant that international sides would once again require to travel to Australia to compete.^[11]

Matches[]

Notable matches include:

**Matches**
Year	Date	Opponent	Result	Stadium	Captain/s (vice-captain)	Coach	Best	Crowd	Notes
2019	26 January	New Zealand	Australia U17 17.20 (122) def New Zealand 7.3 (45)	Marvel Stadium, Melbourne, Australia	Will Phillips (c), (vc)	Luke Power	, Will Phillips, , Alex Davies, Nikolas Cox, Connor Downie, Braeden Campbell, Errol Gulden
2018	^[12]	New Zealand	New Zealand 6.6.(42) def. by Australia U17 21.21.(147)	Wellington Stadium, Wellington, New Zealand	Noah Anderson (c), Hayden Young (vc) Matt Rowell (vc)	Luke Power	, Noah Anderson, Matt Rowell, Hayden Young,
2017	April 24^[13]	New Zealand	New Zealand 5.9 (39) def. by Australia U17 21.19 (145)	Wellington Stadium, Wellington, New Zealand		Luke Power
2016	^[14]	New Zealand	New Zealand def. by Australia U17	North Harbour Stadium, Auckland, New Zealand		Luke Power
2015		New Zealand	New Zealand 3.3 (21) def. by Australia U17 16.1 (107)	Wellington Stadium, Wellington, New Zealand		Chris Johnson
2014	26 January^[15]^[16]	New Zealand	New Zealand 5.6 (36) def. by Australia U17 4.16 (40)	Wellington Stadium, Wellington, New Zealand		Chris Johnson	, Jacob Weitering
2013	January^[17]^[18]^[19]	New Zealand	New Zealand 7.16 (58) def. by AFL-AIS Academy 16.5 (101)	Wellington Stadium, Wellington, New Zealand		Chris Johnson
2012	January ^[20]	New Zealand	New Zealand 6.3 (39) def. by AFL-AIS Academy 19.16(130)	Wellington Stadium, Wellington, New Zealand		Chris Johnson	Jack Billings, Luke McDonald, Billy Hartung, , James Aish, Ben Lennon, Luke Dunstan, Matt Scharenberg
2010	April^[21]	South Africa	South Africa 4.5 (29) def. by AFL-AIS Academy 26.22 (178)	Cape Town, South Africa
2009	April^[22]	South Africa	South Africa 3.2 (20) def. by AFL-AIS Academy 23.14 (152)	Boland Park, Paarl, South Africa
2008	April^[23]	South Africa	South Africa 5.4 (34) def. by AFL-AIS Academy 19.18 (132)	Sedgars Park Stadium, Potchefstroom South Africa
2007	14 April^[24]	South Africa	South Africa 1.6 (12) def. by AFL-AIS Academy 23.24 (162)	Sedgars Park Stadium, Potchefstroom South Africa
1978	June 8^[25]	Papua New Guinea U17	Australia U17 12.13 (85) def Papua New Guinea 10.14 (74)	Football Park, Adelaide, Australia					Sanctioned by the Australian National Football Council as the first official international match involving Australia
1911	24 September	United States (schoolboys)	United States (44) def. by Young Australia (95)	Lincoln Park, San Francisco, United States of America				5,000	Unsanctioned match. Australian side consisted of 40 West Australians + 1 South Australian + 1 Victorian