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LaoAlthough Australia could clearly be considered 'a major sporting nation', it is surprising how few formal sports it has actually invented, despite its young years as a nation.
Its only real claim to fame would be Australian Rules Football, which of itself, of course, is a great and spectacular team game, but rather lonely in terms of formally-recognized sports created in Australia.
A book caption once read: "Australia has invented only one sport ... but what a sport!"
A hybrid form of the game, using a round ball, has also been invented together with help from the GAA of Ireland in order to run biennial, cross-cultural-international competitions, but that is the prime extent.
MINOR SPORTS - AUSTRALIA:
There are, however, Australians who have invented other lesser known or less celebrated sports games.
A lesser-known sport is the highly infectious team game "Grappleball", now known as 'GrappaBall', invented by Denis Towers, of Melbourne, in 1999. The game originally ran nine meetings in as many weeks, incorporating schools, clubs and church groups, before, apparently, he was 'whisked off' to a new full-time employment, which apparently put "paid" to the whole project.
However, it now lives again and can be viewed on YouTube under its name.
Having been a former physical education teacher, he had also started a 'Victorian State Downball Association' in 1981 for the less formal, 'off-the-wall' handball game - also a highly infectious game loved by young people around most of the country [The name of the game was later changed, due to confusion with other games, to "rebound handball"], but state school building policies had already begun changing to include nature strips and more formal concrete walk paths around most of the school buildings, which made game development virtually impossible.
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