Open data

Every community football club in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth

A free dataset of 510 senior community Australian football clubs across 84 council areas — each with its home ground, its council, the leagues it plays in and the grades it fields.

In short

This dataset lists 510 senior community Australian football clubs playing in 21 leagues across 84 council areas in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, covering 8,442,438 residents. For each club it gives the home ground, the council area that ground sits in, the leagues it plays in and the grades it fields. It was compiled from the leagues' and councils' own public records and checked in September 2026.

It counts clubs in the listed leagues. It is not a count of every football club in those cities — junior-only clubs, women's competitions run separately and any league not listed below are outside it.

The data

What is in it

Every number on this page is a count of the file itself rather than an estimate, so anything here can be checked against the download.

Coverage by city
CityCouncil areasClubsLeaguesPopulation covered (2021)
Melbourne32336145,009,838
Adelaide2310051,425,250
Perth297422,007,350
Clubs
510 distinct
Rows in the file
542 — a club whose suburb spans a council boundary appears once per council, flagged in its own column
Council areas
84 (78 of them with at least one club)
Home grounds
508 distinct
Leagues
21
Checked
September 2026
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0, matching the records it is derived from
By council

Where the clubs are

Council areas with the most clubs
Council areaCityClubs
The Yarra RangesMelbourne24
CaseyMelbourne17
BanyuleMelbourne16
The Mornington PeninsulaMelbourne15
ManninghamMelbourne14
BoroondaraMelbourne14
BrimbankMelbourne13
WyndhamMelbourne13
DarebinMelbourne13
KnoxMelbourne13
WhitehorseMelbourne13
CardiniaMelbourne13
Derived

Residents per club

Council population divided by the number of clubs in the data for that council. Useful for comparing how thickly clubs sit on the ground — and easy to misread, so read the note under the table before quoting it.

Most residents per club — top 6 of 78 council areas
Council areaCityClubsPopulation (2021)Residents per club
WannerooPerth4209,11152,278
KwinanaPerth145,86745,867
BelmontPerth142,25742,257
UnleyAdelaide138,64138,641
VincentPerth136,53736,537
Serpentine-JarrahdalePerth132,17332,173
Fewest residents per club — bottom 6 of 78 council areas
Council areaCityClubsPopulation (2021)Residents per club
LightAdelaide515,7923,158
The Adelaide PlainsAdelaide39,8353,278
The Adelaide HillsAdelaide1140,8793,716
GawlerAdelaide424,9886,247
The BarossaAdelaide425,0666,267
The Macedon RangesMelbourne851,4586,432
What this number is and is not. It measures residents per club in the leagues listed above, not residents per football club. A council served mainly by a junior league, or by a competition outside this set, will look sparser here than it is on a Saturday. It is a description of this dataset, not a finding about participation.
Method

How it was built, and what it is missing

Club lists come from each league's own published record of its clubs, and home grounds from those records. Councils come from the suburb the ground sits in, and council populations from the 2021 Census figures published on the council records.

Split suburbs. Some suburbs sit across a council boundary, and a source record naming a suburb does not say which side of the line a ground is on. Those clubs were geocoded and tested against the council polygon; where it still could not be resolved, the club is listed under both councils and flagged in the spans_council_boundary column. Every total on this page counts such a club once.

What is not in it. Junior-only clubs, competitions run separately for women and girls, and any league not listed above. Sydney and Brisbane are not included — their rugby league district records give grounds without suburbs, which is not enough to place a club in a council area honestly. Clubs merge, fold and change grounds between seasons; the competition's own record is right if this file is not.

Licence and attribution. The underlying records are published under CC BY-SA 4.0 and this derived file is offered on the same terms. Attribute Train Smart and the source records, both of which are linked from the league table above.

Citing it

How to cite this dataset

Suggested citation
Train Smart. Community football clubs in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. 2026-09-21. https://trainsmartt.com/data/community-football-clubs/
File
community-football-clubs.csv — 542 rows, 11 columns, UTF-8
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Checked
September 2026

Start training properly

Pick your sport, answer a few questions, and your first week is built before you leave the kitchen.

One month free, then A$24.99/month. Cancel any time. iPhone and iPad.