AFL Grand Final
The AFL Grand Final is an Australian rules football match to determine the premiers for the Australian Football League season. Prior to 1990, it was known as the VFL Grand Final, as the league was then known as the Victorian Football League, and both were renamed due to the national expansion of the competition. Played at the end of the finals series, the game has been held annually since 1898, except in 1924. It is traditionally staged on the afternoon of the last Saturday in September, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. As the premier match of the AFL season, it attracts one of the largest audiences in Australian sport, regularly attracting a crowd of more than 100,000 and a television audience of millions.
The club which wins the grand final receives the AFL's premiership cup and flag; players on the winning team receive a gold premiership medallion, and the best player receives the Norm Smith Medal.
As of the end of 2025, a total of 130 grand finals have been played, including three grand final replays. The Carlton Football Club and Collingwood Football Club have both won 16 grand finals, the most of any club; the Essendon Football Club has also won 16 premierships, although only 14 were earned in grand finals. Collingwood has appeared in the most grand finals, a total of 45; and Collingwood has also won the most consecutive grand finals, with four between 1927 and 1930. Every current AFL club has played in at least one grand final, except for.
Match history
Early history (1897–1915)
The Victorian Football League was established for the 1897 season by eight clubs which seceded from the Victorian Football Association. The new league introduced a system of finals to be contested after the home-and-away matches; this ensured that the premiership could not be decided until the last match had been played, generating greater public interest at the end of the season — compared with the VFA's system, which awarded the premiership based on win–loss record across the entire season, with a playoff match only in the event of tied records. The league arranged that the gate from finals matches be shared among all teams, which guaranteed a better dividend to the league's weaker clubs.Although the finals system used in 1897 had the possibility of a grand final, one was not required. As such, the match now recognised as the first grand final took place in the league's second season, on 24 September 1898, between Essendon and Fitzroy at the St Kilda Cricket Ground. This match too had been in doubt until the night before it was played, Essendon disputing the choice and fitness-for-use of the St Kilda ground, which had already been top-dressed for the cricket season. Despite appealing to the league and even announcing it intended to forfeit, Essendon relented and played the game, and Fitzroy won the inaugural grand final 5.8 d. 3.5 before a crowd of 16,538.
File:1909 VFL Grand Final.jpg|thumb| South Melbourne players enter the field before the 1909 grand final.
Most VFL finals systems utilised until 1930 comprised a short finals system, usually a simple knockout tournament ending with a match called the 'final'; if the 'final' was not won by the home-and-away season's minor premiers, then the minor premiers had the right to challenge the winner of the 'final' to a playoff match for the premiership. At the time, it was only this challenge match, if played, which was known as the grand final; however, all 'final' matches which decided the premiership have since retrospectively been considered grand finals. The 1899 VFL grand final is the earliest such game; it was won by, while losing team would have had to have defeated Fitzroy again in a challenge match to win the premiership. In all, eleven 'finals' are now considered grand finals: eight which were won by the minor premiers and would have resulted in a challenge match had the result been reversed ; and three which decided the premiership but which could not have been followed by a challenge match due to the finals systems and circumstances of those years.
In 1902, the grand final was first played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, when 9.6 defeated 3.9 before a then-record Australian football crowd of 35,000. By 1908, every finals match was played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, and new attendance records were set in 1908, 1912 and 1913. During this period, became the first club to win three consecutive premierships, winning 'finals' in all three years.
Between the wars (1916–1945)
Football and grand finals continued through World War I, albeit with reduced attendances, and some controversy that it distracted from the war effort, with one critic calling for the Carlton team to receive the Iron Cross as their premiership medallion. However, many diggers supported the continuance of the game, and returned servicemen were granted free admission to a portion of the grandstand for the 1918 grand final, with many attending in uniform.File:Essendon fc 1923.jpg|thumb|left|250px|Essendon's premiership team from 1923.
During the 1920s, the VFL grappled with the problems of the challenge final system — specifically that the league was not always guaranteed four finals, and there was the perception that semi-finals could be thrown to guarantee a grand final and the dividend which came with it. On several occasions during the 1920s, semi-final crowds exceeded that of the final or grand final. In 1924, for the second and last time, no recognised grand final was played; a round-robin finals system was played, with the top team from the round robin to face the minor premiers in a grand final if required; but, when minor premiers Essendon also won the round robin, no grand final was staged. This new finals system was abandoned after one year. A new record crowd of 64,288 was set in 1925, when played and won its first grand final, attracting a huge contingent of both provincial and metropolitan supporters. Between 1927 and 1930, became the first and only club to win four consecutive premierships, winning in 'finals' in 1927 and 1928, then grand finals in 1929 and 1930.
In 1931, the Page–McIntyre Final Four system was introduced for finals, which eliminated the minor premier's right to challenge and guaranteed four finals and a genuine grand final each year. Under this system, and all systems which followed it until 1993, one team entered the grand final with a bye week after winning the second semi-final; and the other entered after winning the preliminary final in the week before the grand final. More often than not, the grand final was a rematch between the teams who played the second semi-final two weeks earlier.
Several new record crowds were set through the 1930s, and the Melbourne Cricket Ground's new Southern Stand was constructed and opened in 1937. That year, the Geelong–Collingwood grand final attracted 88,540, with spectators crossing the fence and sitting eight deep along the boundary line; the following year, another record of 96,486 watched play. dominated the final years before the Pacific War, comfortably winning grand finals in 1939, 1940 and 1941.
Football served as a distraction for people and as a war fundraiser on the home front during the World War II. The Australian government requisitioned a number of VFL grounds, including the Melbourne Cricket Ground, so the grand finals were staged at Carlton's Princes Park in 1942, 1943 and 1945, and at the St Kilda Cricket Ground in 1944. The last of those games, in 1945, saw a capacity crowd of 62,986 squeeze into the Carlton ground, which was played just weeks after the armistice with Japan was declared.
Post-war (1946–1990)
When the Melbourne Cricket Ground was relinquished by the government in August 1946, there was great expectation in the buildup to the grand finals, and attendances were soon back to 1930s levels. In 1948, and played the first drawn grand final in history; a full replay was played the following week, which Melbourne won. The sight of thousands sitting between the fence and the boundary line was now usual at the grand final, often resulting in injuries to spectators when players collided with them. Spectators were admitted on a first-come basis, and thousands took to lining up outside the stadium from the Friday before the match to gain the best vantage point when the gates opened on the morning.As the Melbourne Cricket Ground was used as the main stadium for the 1956 Olympic Games, the ground was upgraded again with a new stand and extra capacity, and the 1956 grand final was seen as a dry run for the opening ceremony of the games two months later. Although the official capacity was 120,000, the ground could not comfortably accommodate the record crowd of 115,802. Some spectators who gained entry perched dangerously on the back fences of the grandstands and even the roof of the southern stand to get a view of the game; and in violent scenes outside the ground, at least 2,500 gained entry by mobbing gates, climbing fences or sneaking in when the Military Band arrived, while at least 20,000 more were turned away at the gate. To finally prevent a recurrence of these growing crowd management problems, the VFL introduced a pre-purchase ticketing system for the finals and grand final from 1957, and attendances hovered around the health department's revised ground capacity of 102,000 over the following years.
dominated the 1950s, playing a record seven consecutive grand finals from 1954 to 1960, and winning five premierships, including three in a row from 1955 to 1957. The establishment of the modern premiership cup in 1959 gave the after-match a ceremonial focus and allowed the attention to settle on the premier team, ending the previous custom of the crowd descending on the arena and variously chairing or walking the players off the ground. Delayed telecasts of the match were first shown on television in 1961. The grandstands were expanded again in 1968, and an enduring record crowd of 121,696 saw one of the most famous grand finals of all in 1970, in which overcome a 44-point half-time deficit to defeat. Live telecasts of the grand final into Victoria began in 1977, which saw the second drawn grand final between and. The Norm Smith Medal, awarded to the best on ground in the game, was introduced in 1979.
The 1980s saw a concerted effort by the VFL to relocate the grand final to its privately owned VFL Park, in search of a better commercial deal, but the move was ultimately blocked by the state government and the game remained at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The 1980s saw a sustained period of dominance by, which contested seven consecutive grand finals from 1983 to 1989, winning four of them. The 1989 Grand Final, a high scoring and very physical encounter in which Hawthorn defeated Geelong by six points, is considered to be one of the greatest of all time. By 1990, had lost the last eight decisive grand finals it had played since its 1958 premiership, a streak which became known as the "Colliwobbles"; this came to an end with its victory against in the 1990 grand final.