Footy in the Northern Territory

Current Scores: Weekend of August 3/4, 2024
Despite the presence of various forms in the game in the Aboriginal communities, the game of footy wasn't played on an organised basis until the 1910's with the first game being played in Darwin in 1916. Being the closest Australian city to the equator and with a tropical climate, there is no Winter there so the wet season was chosen for games - totally the opposite time to the other states.
The original home of football in Darwin was the Darwin Town Oval. The Northern Territory Football League was formed in 1916 and managed to get through the First World War before settling down. No attempt was made to expand the game at this point, with an internal argument causing a breakaway competition in 1936. This however settled down.
Organised football stopped during World War 2, emphasised by the Japanese air assault on the northern city. But the game started being introduced properly to the Aboriginal community starting with the Tiwi Islands. Organising proper competition though was much harder to achieve.
Alice Springs started it's own competition in 1947 and played at the same time as the rest of Australia. It took until 1969 for a proper competition to be formed on the Tiwi Islands, named originally the Nguilla competition. Another organised competition was formed in Nhulunbuy on the Gove Peninsula in 1975. Both played during the wet season but the Gove competition started and finished a little earlier. A makeshift competition was created in early 1975 after Darwin was flattened by Cyclone Tracy.
The 1980's saw the biggest expansion in the north of the Territory with organised football being played in the Maningrida community from 1982 and the breakaway from the NTFL by some small Darwin based clubs to form the Northern Territory Football Association - later to become the Top End AFL. In the late 1980's a competition was formed in Katherine. The expansion continued in the 1990's but further south with a competition in Tennant Creek and a community competition around Alice Springs.
In 1991 the Darwin City Council took football out of it's central business district and put it at a new facility at Marrara. The NTFL struggled financially with this move but it survived. At around the same time the Nguilla competition changed it's name to the Tiwi Islands Football League. The competition's grand final is a major event for the Northern Territory, always played at the Stanley Tipiloura Oval in what today is called Wurrumiyanga (it used to be called Nguiu until 2010) and co-incides with the Annual Art Sale.
In 2000 the Katherine competition, despite only being 300 kilometres south of Darwin, opted for a seasons switch to match the rest of Australia. The Gove competition shifted to the same timeline. When the TEAFL was absorbed by the NTFL only two competitions played during the wet season. The Central Australian competition absorbed the Southern communities competition after the 2007 season. Until the end of the 2019 season the Northern Territory hosted a team in the North East AFL until they were removed at the conclusion of the season. After being forced into a very late start to the season in 2021 (pushed to start in 2022) due to the weather and poor road conditions, the Tiwi Islands competition also shifted to compete at the same time as the rest of Australia leaving only the NTFL playing over the Summer months.
Footy in the Territory is unique.
Category:Footy History