Sport in the United Kingdom Sport in the United Kingdom Sport in the United Kingdom plays an important role in British culture. The United Kingdom has given birth to a range of major international sports including: football, rugby, both (union and league), cricket, netball, darts, golf, tennis, table tennis, badminton, squash, croquet, fives, bowls, modern rowing, hockey, boxing, water polo, snooker, billiards, and curling. This has meant that in the infancy of many sports, England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland formed among the earliest separate governing bodies, national teams and domestic league competitions. After 1922 some sports formed separate bodies for Northern Ireland though some continued
Sport in Australia governments, and local governments. In the late 1990s, government support for sport was double that of public non-financial corporations. Amateur sport was transformed in Australia in the 1980s with the creation of the Australian Institute of Sport. The Institute, formally opened by Malcolm Fraser in 1981, was designed to make Australian amateur sport at major world competitions, like the Olympics, competitive with the rest of the world and increase the number of medals won by the country. A few years later, in 1984, the Australian Sports Commission was created to better address the distribution of funds to support sport. It