What is the AFL?
The AFL, or Australian Football League, is the premier professional competition in Australian rules football. It has 18 clubs and culminates each September in the AFL Grand Final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
The competition began in 1897 as the Victorian Football League, or VFL, with eight clubs from Melbourne and Geelong. It was renamed the AFL in 1990 to reflect its growth into a national competition.
Clubs from outside Victoria joined over time, including the Sydney Swans, who relocated from South Melbourne in 1982, the West Coast Eagles and Brisbane Bears in 1987, and the Adelaide Crows in 1991.
A national game
Today the AFL includes ten clubs from Victoria and eight from other states. Gold Coast Suns and Greater Western Sydney Giants were the most recent clubs to join, in 2011 and 2012.
A Tasmanian club, the Tasmania Devils, has been granted a license and is planned to join the competition later in the 2020s.
The AFL attracts some of the largest crowds in world sport. The home-and-away season runs from March to August and is followed by a finals series. Players compete for the Brownlow Medal, awarded to the best and fairest player, and the Coleman Medal for the leading goal kicker.
Did You Know?
Australian rules football is often called footy or Aussie rules.