Australian rules football became the national sport on Nauru in the 1930s, after locals sent their boys 4700km southwest to Melbourne for school.
Children brought the game home to gravel training grounds, and each of the island’s 14 districts adopted the colours of an AFL team and played each other on Saturdays in the shadow of a phosphate processing plant. There were no matches on Sundays because that is strictly a day of rest for the Christian population of 10,000.
