(see
Australian Rules for history+rules of
the sport)
The Australian Football League has grown from the former Victorian Football League, founded 1897 as a rival competition to the Victorian Football Association. The original clubs were Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Fitzroy (now extinct), Geelong, Melbourne, St Kilda and South Melbourne, all of which except Geelong are inner suburbs of Melbourne.
In 1909 Richmond joined the League, followed in 1925 by North Melbourne (now the Kangaroos), Footscray (now Western Bulldogs) and Hawthorn. In 1982 South Melbourne became the Sydney Swans, the first club outside Victoria and only the second outside of Melbourne. It was joined in 1987 by new clubs the West Coast Eagles and the Brisbane Bears and in 1991 by the Adelaide Crows.
Univerity Football CLub, composed of players and faculty from the University of Melbourne and wearing a uniform of black and blue, was invited to join the VFL in 1908. Formerly the top club of the Metropolitain Amateur Football Association they showed initial promise but in the long run performed poorly. This was back in the days of amateur competition, and it was finally the push by the majority of the clubs to professionalism that killed University, who could not make such a transition without losing their identity. They rejoined the MAFA as the University Blues, and still play today.1
In 1992 the VFL officially became the AFL, reflecting its dominance over the other State-based Leagues such as the WAFL and SANFL. The Fremantle Dockers joined in 1995 and the most famous SANFL club Port Adelaide in 1997, forced to adopt the ridiculous American-style nickname the Power as Collingwood refused to entertain the notion of another AFL team calling themselves the Magpies. Also in 1997 after more than a decade of negotiation and last-ditch attempts by diehard fans to save their club the luckless Fitzroy FC (once the Gorillas, then the Maroons and finally the Lions) was finally forced to merge - not with North Melbourne or Footscray or even Collingwood, but with the Brisbane Bears, a club located in a city thousands of kilometres away - hardly a situation conductive to a true "merger". Brisbane simply changed their nickname to the Lions and the Roy Boys faded into history. A Melbourne-Hawthorn merge had also been touted, but these clubs were allowed to vote on the issue: Melbourne's members voted for it, Hawthorn's against.
Currently, the following 16 clubs form the AFL:
- Adelaide Crows Won premiership: 1997, 1998 (2)
- Brisbane Lions 1898, 1899, 1904 1905, 1913, 1916, 1922, 1944 (as Fitzroy); 2001, 2002, 2003 (10)
- Carlton 1906, 1907, 1908, 1914, 1915, 1938, 1945, 1947, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1979,
1981, 1982, 1987, 1995 (16)
- Collingwood 1902, 1903, 1910, 1917, 1919, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1935, 1936, 1953, 1958, 1990 (14)
- Essendon 1897, 1901, 1911, 1912, 1923, 1924, 1942, 1946, 1949, 1950, 1962, 1965, 1984, 1985, 1993, 2000 (16)
- Fremantle Dockers
- Geelong 1925, 1931, 1936, 1951, 1952, 1963 (6)
- Hawthorn 1961, 1971, 1976, 1978, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991 (9)
- Melbourne 1900, 1926, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1948, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1959, 1960, 1964 (12)
- the Kangaroos 1975, 1977, 1996 (as North Melbourne); 1999 (4)
- Port Adelaide 2004
- Richmond 1920, 1921, 1932, 1934, 1943, 1967, 1969, 1973, 1974, 1980 (10)
- St Kilda 1966 (1)
- Sydney Swans 1909, 1918, 1933 (as South Melbourne); 2005 (3)
- West Coast Eagles 1992, 1994, 2006 (3)
- Western Bulldogs 1954 (as Footscray) (1)
The football season commences in March, although there is also a pre-season round-robin tournament known as the
Foster's Cup or similar. The home-and-away season is 22 rounds long, with most games held over the weekend. Each team has a home ground (for the majority of Melbourne teams this is the
MCG) and play half their matches there, half elsewhere. Since the season is so short, clubs do not play every other club twice. In theory it is completely random who plays who and when, but in fact the AFL always schedules the big clubs (such as Collingwood, Carlton, Essendon) to play each other twice.
The teams are tracked on a ladder or table. At the end of the season, the top eight teams play two or three matches each in order to decide who will face off in the Grand Final which is traditionally held on the last Saturday in September and always at the MCG. The winning team is declared to have won the Premiership and recieve the Premiership Cup (formerly a flag). Tickets are almost impossible to obtain, so for those who miss out there is always the Punk Pub Crawl.
State of Origin football matches in their current form date back to 1977. AFL players represent their native States (the traditional football States of Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia, although there's some new fangled "rest of australia" team) and play one match a year. Prior to this system each state league would field a team, but with the VFL being so dominant the top players in the country all came south to play in Melbourne - thus Victoria was winning every match thanks to top players many of whom were not native.
As State of Origin brings little extra income to the players and disrupts their normal playing season, there are moves to abandon it entirely.
The Chas Brownlow Medal is the highest individual award in football and dates back to 1924. Following each home and away match, the umpires award 3, 2 and 1 votes to the three players whom they believe were "best and fairest" on the ground that day. The votes are tallied at the end of the season on national television. Players who are suspended or fined during the course of the season are ineligible to win the Brownlow.
I must note, for the sake of clarity, that the original Victorian Football Association was renamed the Victorian Football League in the late 1990s after it became a part of the AFL. Following the VFL's foundation the two state leagues competed healthily for a few years but the newcomer quickly became dominant. In 2001 all Victorian AFL clubs followed the lead of the interstate teams and their dropped the reserve player competition (just as the under-18s were abandoned a few years prior and Fitzroy was forced to merge - all in the name of economic rationalism) and took over a VFL club each instead.
Although there was some experimentation with private ownership of clubs in the 1980s and early 1990s, most of these ventures collapsed and the various clubs are in theory owned by members, who pay a large yearly fee for the privilege of preferential seating at matches and the right to vote in board/Presidential elections. In practice the clubs are run no differently than if they were privately owned. But it feels better.
The AFL's website is www.afl.com.au.
Other Australian Rules leagues I know of:
Australia:
CFA (Vic.)
MAFA (Vic.)
OMFL (Vic./NSW
QAFL (Qld.)
QCRL (Qld.)
SANFL {SA)
TAFL (Tas.)
WAFL (WA)
WASFL (WA)
VAFL (Vic.)
VFL (Vic.)
Elsewhere:
ARFLI (Ireland)
BARFL {UK)
CAFL (USA)
DAFL (Denmark)
GARFL (PNG)
KARFL (PNG)
LARFL (PNG)
MHARFL (PNG)
NEAFL (USA)
PMARFL (PNG)
RARFL (PNG)
USAFL (USA)
/msg me with more - there are probably thousands in Australia alone.
1. Source for information regarding University FC: http://www.fullpointsfooty.net, "a web site devoted to the history of Australian football"