It will be an historic moment in Australian Sport on Sunday when Port Adelaide and the Gold Coast Suns do battle in the first ever regular season AFL game in China.
Breaking into the Chinese market has long been a goal for just about every Australian sport – this was one of the goals of Super League – and whether the Chinese will take to Australian Rules is debatable.
The AFL are far from the first Australian sporting organisation that has looked to branch out internationally and we have put together this list of Australian Sport’s International Adventures.
AFL In China
This has been David Koch’s baby for a number of years now and his dream will finally come true on Sunday.
The AFL first flirted with China when an exhibition game between Melbourne and the Brisbane Lions was held in Shanghai in 2010, but taking a regular season came to China is a massive step.
I doubt this is the start of a revolution in the game, but it is an interesting endeavour for both the AFL and Port Adelaide Football Club.
AFL in New Zealand
This is not the first time that an AFL regular season game has been held overseas.
New Zealand hosted the first AFL game outside of Australia when St Kilda and Sydney played in Wellington on Anzac Day in 2013 and St Kilda returned to the venue for clashes with the Brisbane Lions in 2014 and Carlton in 2015.
St Kilda lost all three of these games and this might be the reason they gave up on their New Zealand adventure!
V8 Supercars In China
V8 Supercars is as Australian as they come, but the V8 Supercars beat the AFL to China by more than a decade.
In 2005, the fifth round of the V8 Supercar Championship Series was held at the Shanghai International Circuit in China before they held races in Bahrain (2006 to 2010), United Arab Emirates (2010 to 2012) and The United States (2013).
State Of Origin Goes To The USA
Another market that Australian sporting organisations are desperate to crack is the United States Of America.
Rugby League dipped their toe in this market when they played a State Of Origin exhibition match in Long Beach in California in 1987.
The match is remembered for the fact that Peter Sterling was unable to breakthrough the banner, but New South Wales eventually recorded a 30-18 victory in front of over 12,000 American fans.
United States Participate In World Sevens
The next taste of Rugby League American fans received was in 1992 when the United States participated in the World Sevens for the first time.
The United States were there as a novelty team in 1992 – they deliberately threw the ball forward gridiron style and some of the team were wrestlers – but they took the event more seriously in future years and even gave New Zealand a scare in the pool stages during the 1994 edition of the event.
Auckland Warriors Enter The ARL
The Auckland Warriors joined the ARL in 1995 – along with the North Queensland Cowboys, Western Reds and South Queensland Crushers – and became the first team based outside of Australia to compete in an Australian sporting league.
The Warriors just missed the finals in their first season and have struggled for consistency throughout their history, but thy were the predecessors for teams like the Football Kingz, New Zealand Knights, Wellington Phoenix and New Zealand Breakers in other competitions.
Super Rugby Is Formed
It is often easy to forgot that less than 25 years ago, Rugby Union was an amateur sport that did not have a strong international competition.
The South Pacific Championship was held from 1986 to 1990, the Super 6 in 1992 and Super 10 from 1993 to 1995, but it was the advent of the Super 12 in 1996 that really took the sport to another level.
Singapore Slingers Enter The NBL
The NBL has seen more franchises come and go than just about any other Australian sporting competition, but one of their most interesting sides to compete was the Singapore Slingers.
In 2006, the struggling NBL decided that its future lay in Asia and at the end of the 2005/2006 NBL season the license of the Hunter Pirates (formerly the Canberra Cannons) was relocated to Singapore and renamed the Singapore Slingers.
The Slingers were far from a success – both on and off the court – and midway through their second season it was announced that the Slingers would withdraw from the competition at the end of the season.
Australia Joins The AFC
The move from the Oceania Football Confederation to the Asian Football Confederation was a masterstroke from Frank Lowy and played a key role in the growth of football in this country.
Australia has not missed a World Cup since joining the AFC – fingers crossed for 2018 – and we have had plenty of success on the field, with the Western Sydney Wanderers winning the Asian Champions League in 2014 and the Socceroos the Asian Cup in 2015.