Sport
The city has 4 clubs in the Country Rugby League of NSW's Group 2 rugby league competition; Coffs Harbour Comets, Sawtell Panthers, Woolgoolga Seahorses, and Orara Valley Axeman. All clubs offer entries in age groups ranging from under 7s to first grade. The Sawtell Panthers are the current champions in first grade and under 18s, and Woolgoolga Seahorses were runners up to the Port Macquarie Sharks in reserve grade.
There is a local Australian Rules football competition with 3 clubs in the city; Coffs Swans, North Coffs Kangaroos, Sawtell Saints.
There is also a men's and women's association football league, two rugby union clubs (Coffs Harlequins and Southern Cross University), junior and senior basketball competitions and the representative Coffs Suns, field hockey and netball competitions.
In 2001, Coffs Harbour hosted the Oceania region's qualification matches for the 2002 FIFA World Cup. One these matches played at Coffs Harbour was the Australia 31-0 American Samoa game, which set a new world record for international association football's biggest ever win.
Pacific Bay Resort hosted 'Camp Wallaby' throughout the 2000s, in which the ARU Wallabies called Coffs Harbour home.
The 2007 City vs Country Rugby League representative fixture was held in Coffs Harbour. The city is home to the BCU International Stadium, which has hosted FIFA World Cup Qualifiers and a Women's 2008 Beijing Olympics Qualification fixtures for the Matildas in football as well as some NRL pre-season fixtures and domestic one day cricket matches. Coffs Harbour is also known for a great place to skydive due to the hinterland views where The Great Dividing Range meets the sea.
In 2011, Coffs Harbour hosted the Australian round of the FIA World Rally Championship with Rally Australia. The region has hosted international rallying through the 1970s through to the early 1980s. After that time, the events became part of the Australian Rally Championship and NSW Rally Championships. In 2010, it was announced that Coffs Harbour will be the host city for 2011 Rally Australia, using roads from the neighbouring Bellingen, Clarence Valley and Nambucca Shires in addition to Coffs Harbour. 101 cars have been entered for this event, based at Coffs Harbour Airport.
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Famous quotes containing the word sport:
“Rabelais, for instance, is intolerable; one chapter is better than a volume,—it may be sport to him, but it is death to us. A mere humorist, indeed, is a most unhappy man; and his readers are most unhappy also.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For generations, a wide range of shooting in Northern Ireland has provided all sections of the population with a pastime which ... has occupied a great deal of leisure time. Unlike many other countries, the outstanding characteristic of the sport has been that it was not confined to any one class.”
—Northern Irish Tourist Board. quoted in New Statesman (London, Aug. 29, 1969)
“Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.
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—George Orwell (1903–1950)