National Sports Museum
Encyclopedia
- This article is about the museum in Melbourne, Australia. For the museum in New York City, USA, see Sports Museum of AmericaSports Museum of AmericaThe Sports Museum of America was the United States' first national sports museum dedicated to the history and cultural significance of sports in America. It opened on May 7, 2008 and closed February 20, 2009.-History:...
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The National Sports Museum is a museum
Museum
A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...
dedicated to Australian sport
Sport in Australia
Australia has a long sporting history dating back to the mid 1800s. By the 1920s, a number of sports were being played by both men and women, including cricket, badminton, judo, swimming, tennis, netball, lacrosse, golf, hockey and various codes of football....
and is located within the Melbourne Cricket Ground
Melbourne Cricket Ground
The Melbourne Cricket Ground is an Australian sports stadium located in Yarra Park, Melbourne and is home to the Melbourne Cricket Club. It is the tenth largest stadium in the world, the largest in Australia, the largest stadium for playing cricket, and holds the world record for the highest light...
in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. It features exhibitions and galleries of items related mainly to Australian Rules Football
Australian rules football
Australian rules football, officially known as Australian football, also called football, Aussie rules or footy is a sport played between two teams of 22 players on either...
, Cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
, the Summer
Summer Olympic Games
The Summer Olympic Games or the Games of the Olympiad are an international multi-sport event, occurring every four years, organized by the International Olympic Committee. Medals are awarded in each event, with gold medals for first place, silver for second and bronze for third, a tradition that...
and Winter
Winter Olympic Games
The Winter Olympic Games is a sporting event, which occurs every four years. The first celebration of the Winter Olympics was held in Chamonix, France, in 1924. The original sports were alpine and cross-country skiing, figure skating, ice hockey, Nordic combined, ski jumping and speed skating...
Olympic Games
Olympic Games
The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...
, the Sport Australia Hall of Fame and the Melbourne Cricket Ground itself. Other sports also featured include Tennis
Tennis
Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
, Rugby League
Rugby league
Rugby league football, usually called rugby league, is a full contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular grass field. One of the two codes of rugby football, it originated in England in 1895 by a split from Rugby Football Union over paying players...
, Rugby Union
Rugby union
Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...
, Golf
Golf
Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....
, Soccer, Basketball
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...
and Netball
Netball
Netball is a ball sport played between two teams of seven players. Its development, derived from early versions of basketball, began in England in the 1890s. By 1960 international playing rules had been standardised for the game, and the International Federation of Netball and Women's Basketball ...
. The museum has been criticised for a parochial focus on Australian rules football, the most popular code in the four southern of Australia's six states, to the exclusion of sports such as rugby league and rugby union which are more popular within the other two Australian states.
The adjoining MCC Museum features exhibitions relating to the history of the Melbourne Cricket Club
Melbourne Cricket Club
The Melbourne Cricket Club is a sporting club based in Melbourne, Australia. It was founded in 1838 and is regarded as the oldest sporting club in Australia....
. On 6 October 2010, the Australian Racing Museum
Australian Racing Museum
The Australian Racing Museum is a horse racing museum in Melbourne, Australia dedicated to Thoroughbred horses, jockeys and trainers.It was first set up at Caulfield Racecourse in 1981 and closed on 30 August 2003. It then moved to Federation Square on Flinders Street. In October 2010 the museum...
was absorbed into the National Sports Museum, which has now resulted in Horse Racing
Horse racing
Horse racing is an equestrian sport that has a long history. Archaeological records indicate that horse racing occurred in ancient Babylon, Syria, and Egypt. Both chariot and mounted horse racing were events in the ancient Greek Olympics by 648 BC...
standing alongside other prominent Australian sports.