Australian Football League


The Australian Football League is the pre-eminent professional competition of Australian rules football. It was originally named the Victorian Football League and was founded in 1896 as a breakaway competition from the Victorian Football Association, with its inaugural season in 1897. It changed its name to Australian Football League in 1990 after expanding its competition to other Australian states in the 1980s. The AFL publishes its Laws of Australian football, which are used, with variations, by other Australian rules football organisations.
The AFL competition currently consists of 18 teams spread over Australia's five mainland states, with to join the league as its 19th team in 2028. AFL premiership season matches have been played in all states and mainland territories, as well as in New Zealand and China to expand its audience. As of 2024 the AFL is the richest Australian football and overall sports league in Australia by revenue and the 16th richest sports league in the world by revenue.
The AFL premiership season currently consists of a 23-match regular season, which runs from March to September. The team with the best record at the end of the home-and-away season is awarded the minor premiership; the top ten teams then play off in a five-round finals series, culminating in the AFL Grand Final, which is normally held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground each year. The grand final winners are termed the premiers, the most important team prizes for which are the premiership cup and flag., and are the joint-most successful clubs in the competition, having each won 16 premierships. The are the reigning premiers, having won the 2025 AFL Grand Final.

History

VFL era (1897–1989)

Background and founding

Several of the AFL's current member clubs date back to the origins of Australian football and were instrumental in establishing the sport's popularity and the AFL. The oldest club is Melbourne Football Club, which wrote the first laws of the code, and Geelong, which date back to 1858 and 1859 respectively, while Melbourne University, also founded in 1859, is also one of the oldest clubs to have later participated in the competition.
The Victorian Football Association was established in 1877 and quickly went on to become Victoria's football competition. During the 1890s, an off-field power struggle occurred between the VFA's stronger and weaker clubs, the former seeking greater administrative control commensurate with their relative financial contribution to the game. This came to a head in 1896 when it was proposed that gate profits, which were always lower in matches involving the weaker clubs, be shared equally among all teams in the VFA. After it was intimated that the proposal would be put to a vote, six of the strongest clubs—,,, Geelong, Melbourne and —seceded from the VFA and later invited and to join them in founding a new competition, the Victorian Football League. The remaining VFA clubs—Footscray, North Melbourne, Port Melbourne, Richmond and Williamstown—were given the opportunity to compete as junior sides at a level beneath the VFL but rejected the offer and remained for the 1897 VFA season.

1897–1900s: Inaugural VFL season and early years

The VFL's inaugural season occurred in 1897. It made several innovations early on to entice the public's interest, including an annual finals tournament, rather than awarding the premiership to the team with the best record through the season; and, the formal establishment of the modern scoring system, in which six points are awarded for a goal and one point for a behind.
Although the VFL and the VFA continued to compete for spectator interest for many years, the VFL quickly established itself as the premier competition in Victoria. In 1908, the league expanded to ten teams, with Richmond crossing from the VFA and University Football Club from the Metropolitan Junior Football Association. Professionalism began from the 1911 season, with clubs permitted to pay players beyond the reimbursement of expenses for the first time. University, after three promising seasons, finished last each year from 1911 until 1914, including losing 51 matches in a row, in part caused by its players' focus on their studies rather than football and in part because it had chosen to remain amateur; as a result, the club withdrew from the VFL at the end of 1914.
The premiers of the Victorian Football League and the premiers of the South Australian Football League met in a playoff matches for the Championship of Australia beginning in 1888 with a 3-game playoff between South Melbourne from the VFL and the Norwood the most successful club in the SAFA. Matches where then held sporadically during the 1890s as single game playoffs and then annually from 1907 until 1914. South Australian clubs won 8 of the 11 Titles of which was the most successful winning four titles in 1890, 1910, 1913 and 1914. The majority of the matches were held in South Australia at Adelaide Oval. Following the outbreak of World War 1 the Championship playoff ceased and wasn't revived until 1968.

1915–1945: Three VFA clubs join the VFL

In 1916, district football was introduced, meaning new players from metropolitan Melbourne were allocated to clubs based on residential address. In 1925, the VFL expanded from nine teams to twelve, with Footscray, Hawthorn and North Melbourne each crossing from the VFA. North Melbourne and Hawthorn remained very weak in the VFL for a very long period. Although North Melbourne would become the first of the 1925 expansion sides to reach a grand final in 1950, initially it was Footscray that adapted to the VFL with the most ease of the three clubs and by 1928 were well off the bottom of the ladder.
From 1927 to 1930, Collingwood became the first, and as of 2025, the only VFL/AFL team to win four successive premierships.

1946–1975: Post-war golden years

In 1952, the VFL hosted a national day, when all six matches were played outside Melbourne. Matches were played at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Brisbane Exhibition Ground, North Hobart Oval, Albury Sports Ground and Victorian country towns Yallourn and Euroa.
Footscray became the first of the 1925 expansion teams to win the premiership in 1954.
Melbourne became a powerhouse during the 1950s and early 1960s under coach Norm Smith and star player Ron Barassi. The club contested seven consecutive grand finals from 1954 to 1960, winning five premierships, including three in a row from 1955 to 1957. The became the only club to win the minor premiership 6 times in a row from 1955 to 1960.
Television coverage for the VFL commenced in 1957 with direct telecasts of the final quarter permitted. At first, several channels competed through broadcasting different games. However, when the VFL found that television coverage had reduced crowds, it decided that no television coverage was to be allowed for 1960. In 1961 television replays in Melbourne were introduced although direct telecasts were rarely permitted, compared with the rest of Australia where live telecasts happened every Saturday afternoon.
In 1959, the VFL planned the first purpose-built mega-stadium, VFL Park, to give it some independence from the Melbourne Cricket Club, which managed the Melbourne Cricket Ground. VFL Park was planned to hold 155,000 spectators, which would have made it one of the largest stadiums in the world – although it would ultimately be built with a capacity of 78,000. Land for the stadium was purchased at Mulgrave, then farmland but predicted to be near the demographic centre of Melbourne's population.
The VFL premiership trophy was first awarded in addition to a pennant flag in 1959; essentially the same trophy design has been in use since.
In the 1960s, television coverage began to have a huge impact on the VFL. Spectators hurried home from games to watch replays and many former players took up positions as commentators on pre-game preview programs and post-game review programs. There were also several attempts at variety programs featuring VFL players, who generally succeeded in demonstrating that their skills were limited to the football ground.
The VFL played the first of a series of exhibition matches in 1962 in an effort to lift the international profile of the league. In 1967, district football was expanded throughout all of Victoria, clubs now allocated a country zone in addition to their metropolitan districts.
The 1970 season saw the opening of VFL Park, with the inaugural match being played between Geelong and Fitzroy, on 18 April 1970. Construction work was carried out at the stadium as the 1970s progressed, culminating in the building of the now heritage listed Sir Kenneth Luke Stand. Queen Elizabeth II, was a guest at the game and formally opened the stadium to the public. The 1970 grand final between traditional rivals Carlton and Collingwood, arguably the league's most famous game, saw Carlton recover from a 44-point deficit at half-time to win the game by 10 points, featured a famous spectacular mark by Alex Jesaulenko and was witnessed by a record crowd of 121,696.

1976–1981: VFL leaves Australian National Football Council

In 1976, the National Football League, which was the peak national administrative body of Australian rules football at the time, established the NFL Night Series to succeed the Championship of Australia. The Night Series was played concurrently with the premiership season and was contested among twelve clubs from the VFL, SANFL and WAFL, invited based on their finishing positions from the previous year. The event was mostly played on Tuesday nights, with night games at Norwood Oval in Adelaide and all games were televised live in colour on Channel 9, which opened up unprecedented revenue streams from television rights and sponsorship opportunities for the sport. The NFL began plans to expand its Night Series to incorporate more teams from the VFL, SANFL and WAFL, as well as state representative teams from other states.
In November 1976, the VFL announced that it was withdrawing from the NFL's competition, having arranged more substantial television and sponsorship deals for its own, rival night competition for 1977 to be based in Melbourne and feature only the VFL clubs. Light towers were erected at VFL Park specifically for the event. The VFL established a proprietary limited company called Australian Football Championships Pty Ltd in 1978 to run its night competition and offered shareholdings to the other state leagues in an attempt to lure other states into the competition.
For the three years from 1977 until 1979, the NFL and VFL night competitions were run separately as rival night competitions. In 1978, the Tasmanian representative team competed in both the NFL and VFL night competitions but all SANFL and WAFL clubs and the minor states teams remained in the NFL Night Series. In 1979, the WAFL clubs and the New South Wales and A.C.T. representative teams defected from the NFL Night Series and joined the VFL's night competition, leaving the NFL Night Series mostly composed of SANFL teams. The NFL Night Series was not revived in 1980 and the SANFL clubs joined the VFL's night competition. Although the NFL itself continued to exist as an administrative body into the early 1990s, the power gained by the VFL as a result of its take-over of night competition was one of the first significant steps in the VFL's spread interstate and ultimately its take-over and control of Australian football across Australia.
In 1980 and 1981, the first years after the NFL Night Series ended, the VFL night competition was at its largest, with all VFL, WAFL and SANFL clubs plus the four minor states' teams competing for a total of 34 teams. In 1982, the size of the competition was reduced and, thereafter, only the top two or three teams from the SANFL and WAFL, as well as the winner of the minor states' annual carnival were invited.
In 1987, the night competition reverted to include only the VFL teams. The competition was pushed earlier into the year, with the final played on 28 April. The following season, the competition did not overlap with the day premiership season at all and became entirely a pre-season competition. The night competition is generally considered to be of equivalent importance as the pre-season competition and the VFL Night Series and records relating to the three competitions are often combined.
With the number of players recruited from country leagues increasing, the wealthier VFL clubs were gaining an advantage that metropolitan zoning and the Coulter law restricting player payments had prevented in the past. Country zoning was introduced in the late 1960s and while it pushed Essendon and Geelong from the top of the ladder, it created severe inequality during the 1970s and 1980s. Between 1972 and 1987, only six of the league's twelve clubs – Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Hawthorn, North Melbourne and Richmond – played in grand finals.