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Team sports falling out of favour

MORE and more people are showing an appetite for "fastfood sports".

Parks and Leisure Australia national project co-ordinator Wendy Holland said people no longer wanted to train, be part of a committee, fund raise or participate in working bees for their local sporting clubs.

Mrs Holland said they just wanted to "turn up, play, pay and go home", hence the term fast-food sports.

She said this increased community demand for social or recreational sporting activities, because work and family commitments meant people largely no longer had time for serious competitive sport.

Mrs Holland said this phenomenon had fuelled the popularity of indoor sports such as netball, cricket and volleyball, which also could be played on weeknights rather than weekends.

"We're also seeing an increase in the activities the whole family or both sexes can take part in, such as touch football, which is also a fastfood sport, takes a relatively small amount of time, without too many players," she said.

Speaking at the World Leisure Congress 2004 in Brisbane she said the profile of community leisure was rapidly changing to include environmental groups, amateur theatre and Friends Of clubs, and social activities such as trivia nights, rather than a strong focus on organised sports.

Mrs Holland said there also was increasing levels of unstructured activities, such as walking, cycling, swimming and skateboarding, as well as fitness-based activities such as gym workouts, aerobics and triathlons.

She said local government applications for funding traditionally focused on building and maintaining sports grounds, but were now expanding to develop a variety of leisure opportunities such as cycling and walking paths.

Mrs Holland said rural communities were faced with unique challenges because of isolation, drought-affected grounds, changing demographics and ageing populations.

"It's not necessarily a bad thing, they've (recreation trends) changed for a whole range of reasons," Mrs Holland said.

"The reality is things are changing, it's out of the communities' control but communities are adapting - some are flourishing, some aren't."