Sports in NZ

New Zealand has, as every other country a number of popular sports. In NZ rugby is considered to be the  national sport, and in addition to that netball is very popular. Both sports are mainly played in Commonwealth of nation countries. The Commonwealth of nations is an organisation of fifty-two independent countries, which has developed from the old British Empire. Since New Zealand is a former English colony, and a member in the Commonwealth, it is natural that these two sports are of the most popular once.

The Commonwealth flag

As i mentioned earlier rugby is the national sport in New Zealand. Rugby, or Rugby Union which is the formal name of it, is a full contact team sport. It arised at the beginning of the 19th century, in England. In spite of their big differences the sport is often mixed up with American football. This is actually a bit weird, since their only similarity is the oval shaped ball. And as you can see from the picture below, the rugby players don't wear as much protection as the ones playing American Football. Rugby Union is the sport in New Zealand with the most following spectators, and their national rugby team, the All Blacks is considered to be the best national rugby team in the entire world.

From a match between NZ (Black) and South Africa (Green)

Another big sport in New Zealand is netball. It's an indoor ball sport, which has developed from early versions of basketball, found in England somewhere around the 1890s. In New Zealand, as well as in other netball-playing countries, netball is considered to be a woman's sport. It is played on a rectangular court, and at each end you find raised goal rings. The purpose of the game is for each team to pass the ball down the court in order to shoot it through the ring. A netball game is 60 minutes long, with a 10 minute break at half time. In New Zealand netball is the most popular women's sport, considering both participation and public interest. 

 

From a netball game between NZ (Black) and Samoa (Blue)

In addition to the two mentioned ones, sports like cricket, horseracing, soccer and tennis are quite popular. In fact the NZ national team in cricket is top three in the world. And several gold-medalists from the World Championship in horseracing are New Zealenders.

-Helene