Sport in Croatia to some extent table tennis and chess. Various amateur sport games are popular in Croatia, notably picigin. Franjo Bučar (1866–1946) is widely considered to be the father of modern Croatian sport. He founded the Croatian Sports Federation in 1909 within what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Bučar introduced a multitude of mainstream sports in Croatia, such as football, alpine skiing, ice skating and ice hockey, as well as gymnastics and fencing. The Franjo Bučar State Award for Sport, the Republic of Croatia's highest award in the development of sport, is named in his honor. With the exception of the years
Sport in Australia identity as a sport-obsessed country, an identity which was embraced inside the country. This was so well known that in a 1962 edition of "Sports Illustrated", Australia was named the most sports obsessed country in the world. In 1967, Australia hosted the second World Netball Championships in Perth. That same year, South Australia became the last state to lift its ban on the playing of sports on Sunday. Starting in the early 1970s, Australian sport underwent a paradigm shift with sponsorship becoming one of the fundamental drivers of earnings for Australian sport on amateur and professional levels. By the mid-1980s,