The area I'm in is it's own separate federation.  I think from past posts it's quite high up the rankings of registered players.  I was reading in the paper the other day that most locals clubs have gotten a surge in regos of up to 20% on last years numbers increasing them to all time highs.

Rugby league is pretty big around these parts, AFL is pretty niche, but football is far and away the highest participation sport here.

Just wondering why historically this area has such high numbers given it's not a massive area for what they used to call 'new Australians' or more colloquially 'effniks'. 

I’ve always found NNSW Football pretty strange.

Doing fairly extensive research on NPL players in the past. Compared to all of the other State based NPL Comps, in NNSW there actually looks to be less players of ‘Effnik’ backgrounds than most other NPL comps. (this could be totally wrong as an actual %) But that’s what it looks like purely to me. 

Didn't the "locals" ever call all the British miners who settled there in the late 1800s "New Australians"?
BTW 30% of the league says "hello" 
*Im not mentioning the the Anglo/Celtic/Irish teams as that may be a little confusing for you :)
  

It is the sport of choice here DS and I'd say you were bang on with your characterisation of the makeup of teams here. Not saying it's right or wrong but it does seem to be that way in that there are more 'anglos' than 'ethnics' playing. (The area is definitely changing now.  We have quite a few refugees in town that are playing football now. Sudanese and some other African lads, Iraqis and Iranians and some of the Myanmar Rohinghas. From reffing and playing against these blokes I reckon they've lifted the standard for sure.



Congratulations for picking 3 Newcastle clubs.  I really couldn't give a shit about them.  I am talking about clubs and football participants in the North of the state.  Everything past Forster to pick a point on the map. (This is not about  you and your friggin Greek mates.  Is there no thread you won't ruin with your bullshit?)

As a generalisation I would say the coast, all 600kms of it to the Qld border is more 'anglo' than other places in NSW which makes me wonder why football has such a hold here compared to other places in Australia given the relative populations of the areas. 

As for the term 'new Australians' that is the term I heard growing up when referencing my family and their friends who were all post war immigrants from Europe.  (I'm sure the term was probably used before that.)

And just for reference there are a good 14 or so clubs in Coffs, a dozen or so in Port, more in Yamba, Ballina, Byron, Maclean, Bangalow etc and next to none have any sort of ethnic connotation associated with them.

Just a smattering of the different comps here.

https://websites.sportstg.com/comp_info.cgi?a=FIXTURE&compID=583367&c=1-8226-0-0-0
https://websites.sportstg.com/comp_info.cgi?a=FIXTURE&compID=578899&c=1-8276-0-0-0
https://websites.sportstg.com/comp_info.cgi?a=FIXTURE&compID=578912&c=1-8276-0-0-0
https://websites.sportstg.com/comp_info.cgi?a=FIXTURE&compID=578883&c=1-8276-0-0-0

mate, haven't you ever gone by on the pac hwy New Italy between raging Grafton (lol) to Byron ? place is great to stop by for that was/is my coffee break instead of the carparks for years.
https://www.newitaly.org.au/history/migration/
Heap of effnicks have been up the coast all the years I have been driving Sydney to Noosa, maybe the kids didn't play that much back then having to work the farms but very Anglo agreed with a mix obviously, don't forget many Chinese settled in the early years as well.
Yep NRL rules commercially adf glad gayfl struggles and never will grow But Football always been damn good up there that surprise's me considering the few more degrees higher than us in the big smoke.
Great to see the increase in participation, always been good numbers even better the more.

Yes top spot that.  There are definitely migrants here like anywhere but not in the numbers and concentrations you see elsewhere. To me football in Sydney and Melbourne was driven post war by post war immigrants but I know that from growing up in a large regional town in NSW the clubs weren't ethnically based.  Yes there was Yoogali united which were Italian but most of the teams I played against when I was a lad in Temora, Narrandera, Wagga, Albury, Griffith, Yass etc weren't ethnically based.  Yes they had ethnic players from ethnic parents but they weren't playing holus bolus for a croatian or a greek or an Italian club.

The point I'm wondering is how did football become the predominant sport in Northern NSW when it wasn't driven by post-war immigration and the area is predominantly anglo.  (Or maybe it was. That's what I'm trying to find out.) 

if You are talking participation rates,i am pretty sure you will find that soccer is the number 1 sport in most of the country wouldnt you? so it isnt really that out of the ordinary.

On a per capita basis we are, I think, second as a federation.  I need Gyfox in here with the actual numbers.  He's all over it.

Let me guess, Im derailing a thread which purports to claim how ethnically pure the NNSW federation is, sorry to disappoint but I would say that 3 teams out of 10 in the top flight of the area being European migrant based AND another 3 also being British migrant based (I dont make a distinction between the two but I guess you might) sort of debunks your message?
All of my mates are Australian, whether you chose to call them so based on where their parents were born is totally up to your own conscience.
As for the ethnicity of the teams you mention, just looking at the below fixture from your first comp I would presume Thistles were founded by Scotsmen and South Lismore Scots Irish? Just because they never had an issues with NCIP like Hamilton Azzuri did, doesn't make them non "ethnic"

Take your garbage elsewhere.  I'm not claiming it's 'ethnically pure' as a crack at ethnic based clubs.  I couldn't give a rat's arse actually.  

I've said what I want to know.  If you can't help scroll on by.

I grew up near Taree and agree there's a ton of football passion up and down the coast. When I was a kid we had a rep team that competed with all the Newie teams as well as Oxley representing Port Macquarie. I don't think this pathway exists any more.

My local club also competed in the Mid North Coast Premier League which ranged from Forster up to Coffs Harbour. So weekends invariably involved a lot of travel - A LOT. I don't know if all the city slickers would recognise how much of a commitment this requires from families. Much easier for kids in Newie and the Hunter Valley to enter the system, so to speak.

Q: "Just wondering why historically this area has such high numbers given it's not a massive area for what they used to call 'new Australians' or more colloquially 'effniks'."
 A: Because that area was settled by many "effniks" from football mad British countries more than a hundred years ago and the clubs are still around.... maybe?
You claim to not give a rats arse yet your comments bely a deep seated hatred of Australians with Southern European ancestry or am I wrong? Is there a reason for this? You really need to be a little more polite to people, its not worth raising your blood pressure over an internet forum. 

Back in the 60's there was some serious competition between Sydney and Newie clubs for talent. It was really the peak of Football rivalry between the cities.
As has been mentioned, a lot of immigration directly to the Hunter valley from the 1880's through to the 1960's. Mining and industrial jobs, great seed bed for Footballers.

The numbers in 2019 were:
FNSW - 231,525 registered players
FVic - 75,998
FQld - 72,996
NNSW - 53,777
FWest - 39,522
FSA - 35,069
CapitalF - 17,986
FTas - 11,854
FNT - 3,457

FNSW, NNSWF and CapF all have 4.0% of their population being registered players.  These and FTas, 2.3%, are the only federations above the national average of 2.2%.  The rest have between 1.1% and 1.6% of population being registered players.

Northern NSW has a long history of football initially due to immigration from the UK to Newcastle and the Hunter Valley to work in the mines.  It was the first place in Australia to have professionals playing the game for the local teams sponsored by the pubs.  There is a 17 file typed tome on football in NSW that starts with details of football in NNSW and lists when the various clubs commenced.  There were over 170 clubs listed in NNSW from 1884, when Minmi Rangers was founded, before the first ethnic club in 1959.  Football has been big in the region since the day dot.

The 17 file document I mentioned above can be found on the Melbourne Soccer website under "Yearbooks and Annuals" - "Sid Grant and Harry Hetherington's History of Soccer in New South Wales"

http://melbournesoccer.blogspot.com/p/history-documents.html

Always been a divsion politically between FootballNSW & NNSW federations.  If both feds were united NSW would have an unbelievably strong football grassroots.  

Why would you join them when NNSW holds its weight against everyone as a percentage of population.  It is not places like NNSWF that is holding football back, it is WA, SA, Qld and Vic that need to major on growing the grassroots.

Good opportunity to dominate the NPL in NSW, these clubs are good value for youth players coming through, although, jumping up a level and trying to find owners to run an A League team is a different beast altogether. Just ask the Jets and Mariners.

Yeah it's a huge commitment The local NPL sides compete in Newcastle comp.  4 teams from Coffs (u13, 14, 15 and 16s) go down a Saturday on a bus leaving at 6am and return at 10.30pm.  Port have similar teams and a similar trip.  It is a long, long day for the kids.

The Coffs NPL side won the under 13's in the first year then won it the next (U14's) and then they won the U15's.  8 of those teams were from Newcastle including what they call the Emerging Jets.  (They play a year up). There's a lot of talent around these parts. Teams here. https://websites.sportstg.com/comp_info.cgi?a=FIXTURE&compID=575996&c=1-10182-0-0-0

I'm currently refereeing and doing AR for the Coastal Premier League here and it's a pretty good standard.  It started last year but blew up because of Covid when they barred inter-regional travel and they played a localised version of it.  So technically this will be the first full season of the CPL.   There's 12 teams.

Getting an 'elite' competition was a great move.  It's easy to see how P & R could work here too.  Pretty sure if my town had a team that was promoted and we were playing Sydney and Newcastle teams I'd be going to most matches.  Not only that a lot of the better players from the non promoted teams would get signed by whoever was promoted which would strengthen that side.
Teams here. https://cpl.football/

Cheers Gyfox.

When people say 'ethnics' or 'ethnically based' they are USUALLY talking about Southern European countries.  So in this context when I say 'ethnics' I'm talking about them not British people who, as you correctly point out, are technically 'ethnic' too.

I don't hate Southern Europeans.  My family is from there and central Europe.  I'm telling you that those 'ethnic' clubs (Southern European in this instance) don't seem to be around these parts in large numbers compared to other areas of Australia.  

It's interesting that in other areas which were settled by British immigrants in large numbers Rugby league and AFL are the more dominant codes.  The North Coast, what what I see, appears to be an oddity where football is the dominant code.

I'm glad you agree that British ethnicity is also a thing and I won't labour the point anymore.. The game in Australia was known as "the British game" and most state federations were called some variation of "British Football -Soccer Association of ___" up until the 40s I believe . Gyfox can you confirm please? 
Not sure geographically if these are the areas you are talking about in links below, but a cracking read anyway. I always presumed that British miners settled in  these  North Coast areas  and brought the working class soccer with them. Rugby took root in  bigger towns where  British migration was more .... "aristocratic" or wanted to be. 
https://www.shootfarken.com.au/judy-masters-new-south-wales-versus-england-1925/
https://www.shootfarken.com.au/finding-eadie-fraser/
https://www.shootfarken.com.au/joseph-bilbie-football-soccer-anzac-from-minmi-who-became-a-hero-on-the-way-to-war/

The link I posted in reply to Muz has some great snippets of information one of which was that the game was universally called football in NSW up until at least 1926 even though the Commonwealth Football Association that was formed in 1911 to oversea the game in Australia changed its name (or handed over) to the Australian Soccer Association in 1922.  I don't know how long the game was referred to as South British Football here.

Yes, British immigrants introduced football to Australia. The first team were the Wanderers in Sydney, it was founded 3 August1880. Oldest club is called the Balgownie Rangers 1883. After being known as Football since the first settlers, in 1882, South British Football was created by an immigrant named John Walter Fletcher, it disbanded as that entity in 1960.
A match was played in 1875 by inmates and wardens, vs a visiting Brisbane Australian Rules Football team at the Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum. I still have relatives there. Not Shielas Wogs or Poofters then hey Afl boys?

It was the British Football Association of Victoria down here, found what I was looking for in your excellent link, thanks 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CZB2-ncBn4C8w26P5A_5AELWVacF-a2A/view

Yeah, I last played in equivalent of the CPL about 10 years ago (I think it had a different name then), after having spent a couple of years in Northern New South Wales NPL. Honestly, it was a pretty good level.

Since then I’ve been mostly living abroad. Sadly, during that time my team has dropped back to the Football Mid North Coast Southern League. To be fair, we were a small coastal town arguably punching above our weight (maybe you can guess the club?). Man, we had some nice grudge matches with Taree Wildcats.

Pretty sure the Manning rep team got combined with Oxley/Port Macquarie too, which seems weird as growing up these two teams did not get along particularly well. 

Awesome to hear Coffs teams are having some success. That’s a brutally long day of travel too, but worth it! Thanks for sharing.