Aussie Rules (AFL) in China

Yesterday, during his visit to Australia, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang attended an AFL match.  

AFL, or Aussie Rules, is a game that is incredibly physical, involves a rugby-shaped football, and the simple objective of getting the ball between two posts on a field. It is a sport that originated in Australia but has made its way across the shores to China and Premier Li’s visit to the game on Saturday is seen as an endorsement of how far the sport has come.

With a number of leagues springing up around Beijing and Guangdong over the last decade, the sport has had a promotional push by the Port Adelaide Football Club’s China Strategy. Aussie Rules is not just a sport, it’s also a community that heralds the Australian value of ‘having a go’, or the courage to try something you might be scared of. 

“It’s all about having a go,” says Feti Meka, an Australian student and captain of the Wudaokou Warriors, a Beijing AFL team, when he advises his Chinese friends on their first AFL game, “the best thing that you can do today is to find the ball and have a go and do what you think is right.” 

In Premier Li’s article in the Australian, a major newspaper in the country, he says how China truly admires the Australian people for their perseverance and courage to forge ahead.  

That’s one thing that the Australian sport brings to China, says Zhang Hao, operations manager of South China AFL, it is a sport that builds courage in a community, “it’s not only a sport, it’s a brotherhood, with time going, it has already become part of life.”

A lifestyle sport that is continually building stronger people to people ties between Australia and China.