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- The "Barassi Line" is an imaginary line in Australia which approximately divides areas where Australian rules football and rugby league is the most popular football code. It was first used by historian Ian Turner in his "1978 Ron Barassi Memorial Lecture". Crowd figures, media coverage, and participation rates are heavily skewed in favour of the dominant code on both sides of the line. Despite Australia's relatively homogeneous culture, a strong dichotomy exists in the country's football sporting culture. The divide has existed since Australian rules football and rugby league developed their identities as distinct codes. Australian rules football is the most popular football code to the west and south of the line, with centres in Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Hobart, while rugby league and rugby union are more popular on the eastern side, with centres in Sydney and Brisbane. Each side represents roughly half of the Australian population due to the concentration of the population on the east coast. Roughly speaking, the line follows Queensland's western border, drops southeast through western New South Wales, and ends at the Pacific Ocean at Cape Howe on the border of New South Wales and Victoria. It divides New South Wales, placing the Riverina area of southern New South Wales and the western mining city of Broken Hill on the Australian rules football side, and the rest on the rugby side. The line runs through the national capital of Canberra, where each sport has had similar prominence at different times throughout history – although the rugby codes have established greater prominence there in the decades since the line was first proposed. At the time the term was first used, neither code had professional teams or leagues operating on the opposing side. In the years since, Australian Football League (AFL) in Australian rules football, the National Rugby League (NRL), and the multinational body SANZAAR which organises the Super Rugby competition in rugby union, expanded their domestic competitions to include teams from both sides of the line. Other sports have no such separation in Australia. Cricket has been played on a national scale by state representative teams for over 100 years and, in 1977, soccer became the first sport in Australia to start a club-based national league. (en)
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