The Australian Football League is the most famous sports competition in the country. After a century of mergers between several national Aussie governing associations, the AFL gradually developed. Today, the Australian Football League is the country’s greatest sporting league financially, with significant press and corporate sponsorship programs under its belt.
How The AFL Originated
The League originates from Australian Rules Football, which started in 1858, in Melbourne. More than a decade and a half earlier, several of the current AFL clubs were created, such as the First Club, the 1859 Melbourne Football Club, and the 1877 Victorian Football Association with eight clubs: Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Fitzroy, Geelong, Melbourne, South Melbourne, and St. Kilda. The sport came to be known as the “Melbourne Rules,” “Victorian Rules,” or “Australasian Rules,” and quickly started to spread from Victoria to other Australian territories such as Tasmania, Queensland, South Australia, New South Wales, and Australian Capital Territory.
It was in 1879 that Victoria and South Australia conducted the first inter-colonial game. By the 1890s, there were powerful distinct contests between the South Australian National Football League and the West Australian Football League. Soon after, a rift resulted in the creation of the Victorian Football League in the Victoria Football Association, which began competing independently in 1897. By 1925, after joining Richmond University in 1908, the Victorian Football League became the most prominent group, although the University left due to conflict in 1915. The setup of the 12 teams underwent a few changes in 1982 when South Melbourne was relocated to Sydney. In 1987, Western Australia’s West Coast Eagles and Queensland’s Brisbane Beers jumped onto the football bandwagon.
The South Australian National Football League, the West Australian Football League and the Victorian Football League have been regarded as peers for most of the 20th century. They began to challenge each other at local games more often over the years, creating a stronger sense of competition among the many clubs dotted throughout the country.
The AFL Today
Today’s Australian Football League came into being in 1990 after the governing body of the Victorian Football League chose to sell the contest as an official domestic league, renaming itself shortly after. Now acknowledged by global teams as the governing body of Australian Football, the AFL Commission has long been in charge of the sport, and have set all of the modern rules governing the sport.
The advent of the Australian Football League led to a fast decrease in all other state leagues, including the South Australian National Football League and the West Australian Football League. The league has been effective in pressing other associated teams into co-branding with it in its fresh state since it was first created. Today’s domestic competition has teams centred in at least five of six Australian states. It is followed enthusiastically by millions of fans – similarly to bingo Australia – between March and early September, and is set in 22 match stages. The high-octane national finals of the Australian Football League are performed between the two groups after a number of preliminary games.
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