Introduction

There are countless compelling rivalries in Australian sport. Some, such as the rugby league rivalry between New South Wales and Queensland, are followed fervently by hundreds of thousands of people. Others, such as Wangaratta versus the Wangaratta Rovers in Australian Rules football, captivate small rural communities. But what is it that makes a great rivalry? The most important ingredient is tumult, closely followed by time.

Many of Australia’s most famous sporting rivalries have histories that date back more than a century. For instance, Australia and England took part in the first recognised cricket Test match in 1877, although Test series between the nations did not become known as ‘the Ashes’ until 1882, when the Aussies beat their colonial masters at the Oval in London. A mock obituary was subsequently published in The Sporting Times, which proclaimed that English cricket had died and ‘the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia’. All these years on, the cricketing rivalry between the nations runs so deep that it is defying the general waning interest in the game’s longest form.

Australian Rules football’s greatest adversaries, Carlton and Collingwood, played their first match in the same year as that history-making cricket Test at the Oval. Friends during their early years, the clubs soon became bitter enemies, their clashes drawing larger and larger crowds until a record attendance of 121,696 crammed into the Melbourne Cricket Ground to see them square off in the 1970 VFL grand final. The most extraordinary chapter in their rivalry was written that afternoon, when the Blues came from 44 points down at half time and swamped the Magpies in a dramatic finish. Carlton would defeat Collingwood in two more grand finals during the following 11 seasons, those classic contests cementing the rivalry in Australian sporting folklore.

It has also taken more than a century to build the rugby union rivalry between the Wallabies and the All Blacks into the fabled battle it has become. Similarly, New South Wales and Queensland have been squaring off since 1908. Matches between the Blues and Maroons have come to represent the broader animosity between the states and their people, and this is a key reason why the clashes have become such passionate expressions of state pride.

When it comes to tumult, it is hard to top the rivalry between Australia and New Zealand in netball. So closely matched are the teams that every match they play is like a world championship final. The fact the teams have been ranked number one and two in the world for the best part of 80 years just adds to the intensity and passion on display, on and off the court, whenever the Diamonds take on the Silver Ferns.

Great sporting rivalries between individuals last for a much shorter period of time, but they are no less passionate or compelling. It is not hard to find footy fans in Melbourne pubs who want to regale you with stories of the great Carey–Jakovich battles during the 1990s and early 2000s; similarly, cricket fans still talk about the way Shane Warne cast a spell over one of South Africa’s most talented batsmen, Daryll Cullinan, during the same period.

Great rivalries can’t be created overnight by a marketing wiz on a computer, although plenty of attempts are made as new clubs are added to century-old competitions. Rather, it takes a mixture of time and dramatic events to build up the passion and engagement that leads a sportsperson or fan to grit their teeth and mutter, ‘It’s us against them.’