Sport
The area has a rich and intricate Australian Football history. There are currently approximately 30 players on Australian Football League team lists in the AFL from the Latrobe Valley & Gippsland.
Latrobe Valley is currently the only large regional centre in Victoria that does not have a team participating in the Victorian Football League, despite the fact that the area within an approximate 35 km radius of Moe (Drouin, Warragul, Trafalgar, Moe, Morwell, Churchill, Traralgon and other smaller towns) has a population well over 100,000, as large or larger than places such as Bendigo and Ballarat that do have teams participating in the VFL.
The Victorian Football League was formerly known as the Victorian Football Association (VFA). When that league was called the VFA – people involved in it stated that their goal was for the VFA to become the statewide league in the state of Victoria. When there is a team based in Moe in the Latrobe Valley they will have achieved their goal of that league becoming the statewide league in Victoria.
The region is represented in the Victoria State TAC Cup Under 18's competition by the Gippsland Power.
Gippsland Power played its first season in the TAC Cup competition in 1993. The Power have won one premiership to date in 2005 – and been runner-up on two occasions in 1999 and 2010.
Over 60 players have been drafted from Gippsland Power onto Australian Football League club lists since the first player was drafted in 1993.
Gippsland Power has had three players win the TAC Cup Under 18's Morrish Medal – the award for the best & fairest player in the Tac Cup as voted by the umpires – Matthew Stolarczyk in 1999, Jarryd Blair in 2008 and Dyson Heppell in 2010.
The Gippsland League Football competition is the largest league in the region and one of the largest and highest standard football leagues in Victoria outside of Melbourne. Five of the ten teams in the Gippsland League are based in the Latrobe Valley.
The most recent premiership won in the Gippsland League (or equivalent) by a team based in the Latrobe Valley was Traralgon Maroons in 2005.
The Mid Gippsland Football League is the second largest football league in the area and comprises 10 teams – all of which are exclusively based in the Latrobe Valley.
9 of the 10 teams in the Gippsland Soccer League are based in the Latrobe Valley (the other team is based in Sale).
Read more about this topic: Latrobe Valley
Famous quotes containing the word sport:
“Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting summer’s lingering blooms delayed,
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o’er the green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)
“What sport shall we devise here in this garden
To drive away the heavy thought of care?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Americans living in Latin American countries are often more snobbish than the Latins themselves. The typical American has quite a bit of money by Latin American standards, and he rarely sees a countryman who doesn’t. An American businessman who would think nothing of being seen in a sport shirt on the streets of his home town will be shocked and offended at a suggestion that he appear in Rio de Janeiro, for instance, in anything but a coat and tie.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)