Australian Football League (AFL)
The Australian Football League (AFL) is the premier organization for Australian-rules football, a sport distinct from soccer and more similar to rugby or American football. Established in 1897 as the Victorian Football League, it began with eight teams and has grown to include eighteen teams across five Australian states. The AFL season runs from March to September, featuring each team playing twenty-two games over twenty-three weeks, culminating in a playoff tournament for the top eight teams. The Grand Final, held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, is one of the largest sporting events globally, attracting over 100,000 spectators.
The league functions with an egalitarian structure, overseen by seven commissioners, and employs a salary cap to ensure competitive balance among teams. Historically, certain clubs have dominated the league, with Essendon and Carlton each claiming sixteen premierships. While the AFL aims to be a source of national pride and promote positive role models, it has faced challenges due to off-field controversies involving players. Overall, Australian-rules football is a significant cultural phenomenon in Australia, reflecting the country's unique history and values.
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Australian Football League (AFL)
Established near the end of the nineteenth century, the Australian Football League (AFL) is the country’s top competitive Australian-rules football organization. Marked differences exist between traditional, European-style football—also known as soccer—and Australian football. In both styles of play, the rule of accumulating goals by kicking a ball between two goalposts is the same. However, in Australian football, players are allowed to tackle opponents, disrupt opposing players’ movements by standing directly in front of their oncoming path, and handle the ball with their hands. In this way, Australian football is more akin to rugby or American football than soccer.
The Australian Football League consists of eighteen teams dispersed throughout five of Australia’s states, including Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, and the Northern Territory. The teams play twenty-three games apiece paced over twenty-five weeks between March and September, when favorable weather conditions allow an ideal environment for competition.
Brief History
Although known today as the Australian Football League, the league was initially called the Victorian Football League. Founded in 1897, it originally had eight teams, who represented the geographic areas of Melbourne, South Melbourne, Essendon, Carlton, Collingwood, Fitzroy, Geelong, and St. Kilda. In 1908, the teams of Richmond and University were added to the league; after several losing seasons, University left the league. Then, in 1925, the league expanded again to include the clubs of Footscray, Hawthorn, and North Melbourne. This configuration of twelve clubs held for over fifty years until 1986, when the West Coast Eagles and the Brisbane Bears joined. (In 1996, the Bears and the Fitzroy Lions merged, forming the Brisbane Lions.) The Gold Coast Suns and the Greater Western Sydney Giants joined the league 2009.
In 1980, fans decried the lack of competition between small-market and large-market teams, and as a result, the first player draft was established in 1981, with the poorest performing team receiving the first pick. In the first draft, Melbourne selected twenty-six-year-old wingman Alan Johnson, who twice won the Keith "Bluey" Truscott Memorial Trophy, given to the "best and fairest" Melbourne player. In 1990, nearly one hundred years after its inception, the league was renamed the Australian Football League, to lend some support to clubs outside the area of Victoria.
The Australian Football League is dominated by a handful of teams. The clubs of Collingwood, Essendon, Carlton, Richmond, Melbourne, Hawthorn, and Geelong each have a double-digit number of championships (or premierships); as of 2025, Collingwood, Essendon, and Carlton each won the championship sixteen times, while Richmond, Melbourne, and Hawthorn have each won the championship thirteen times and Geelong has won it ten times. The championship game is held each year at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which is the tenth largest stadium in the world, with a capacity of more than one hundred thousand seats. This makes the championship game one of the most attended sports events in the world, surpassing even the Super Bowl, the championship game of the National Football League (NFL) of the United States, which has annual attendance numbers of fifty thousand to sixty thousand people.
Overview
The Australian Football League season is structured in a way that the eighteen teams play twenty-three games over the course of twenty-four or twenty-five weeks; each team receives one bye. The standings are determined by points; teams earn four points for a win and two for a tie. If teams are tied for points in the standings, then tiebreakers are determined by comparing how many in-game points the teams have scored and how many they have allowed. At the conclusion of the regular season, which is known as the Premiership Season, the top eight teams participate in a four-week playoff tournament. The last two teams remaining play in the Grand Final, essentially the Super Bowl of the AFL. Ten commissioners oversee the general affairs of the league, adding an egalitarian aspect to the AFL. (In contrast, major American sports leagues, such as the NFL, are headed by a single commissioner who is responsible for all of the major decisions made by the league.)
The AFL also has a salary cap, instituted in the 1980s, which seeks to promote an equal playing field among all the teams. The salary cap has not only a ceiling that teams must not exceed but also a floor that teams must spend to, ensuring that all teams meet a certain level of competition.
Australian-rules football reflects the overall spirit of the frontier in Australia as a source of national pride. The country’s geographic isolation from the rest of the world has cultivated a sense of self-reliance that is seen in the country’s top players. After all, Australia was founded by Great Britain as a penal colony, and it is this rebellious nature that is seen in its professional athletes, particularly football players.
While the league strives to provide role models for the youth of Australia, in the twenty-first century there have been numerous off-field incidents that have partially sullied the AFL’s reputation. Members of the West Coast Eagles, an up-and-coming franchise, have shared in most of the controversy. In 2007, Ben Cousins, considered by many to be one of the greatest Australian footballers of all time, was accused of having a substance-abuse problem. Cousins mounted a successful comeback, but his reputation was permanently altered. During his time in the league between 2000 and 2013, high-profile midfielder Daniel Kerr was involved in at least seven disciplinary incidents. After his retirement, he was convicted of arson and sentence to jail time and, once released, was convicted of domestic violence. Kerr also suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, a condition that worsened while serving his sentence for arson.
Many AFL players have dealt with mental health issues and disorders due to stress, anxiety, injuries, and the constant pressure to be a superior athlete in the spotlight. In 2018, the AFL significantly increased its focus on player mental health with the introduction of their AFL Industry Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy, which included a dedicated Head of Mental Health and Wellbeing, a multidisciplinary team, and various programs designed to support players' mental health across the league.
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