Afl Australian Football League Essay Example
Afl Australian Football League Essay Example

Afl Australian Football League Essay Example

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  • Pages: 10 (2489 words)
  • Published: November 27, 2017
  • Type: Research Paper
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.AFL History In 1857, Tom Wills, one of the founders of Australian Football, returned to Australia after schooling in England where he was football captain of Rugby School and a brilliant cricketer. Initially, he advocated the winter game of football as a way of keeping cricketers fit during off-season. The new game was devised by Wills, his cousin H. C.A. Harrison, W. J. Hammersley and J. B. Thompson.

The Melbourne Football Club was formed on August 7, 1858 – the year of the code’s first recorded match between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar School. The game quickly blossomed.The Geelong Football Club was formed in 1859 and in 1866 an updated set of rules was put in place and competition started.

The Victorian Football League was established in 1896 and the following year the League’s first games were played among the foundation club

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s – Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Fitzroy, Geelong, Melbourne, St Kilda and South Melbourne. In 1908, Richmond and University joined the competition. But after the 1914 season, University left the League. In 1925, Footscray (now the Western Bulldogs), Hawthorn and North Melbourne (now the Kangaroos) joined the VFL.This line-up of 12 clubs would remain unchanged until 1987 when the competition expanded to include the West Coast Eagles and the Brisbane Bears.

BY 1997, the competition comprised 16 clubs after Adelaide (in 1991), Fremantle (in 1995), and Port Adelaide (in 1997) joined the now Australian Football League and foundation club Fitzroy merged with the Brisbane Bears to form the Brisbane Lions (after the 1996 season). AFL chronology AFL - The Story So Far: A Chronology 1897 – 2006 2000 - 2006 The first league season of the new millenniu

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begins three weeks earlier than usual with the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games to begin in early September. 990 - 1999

The decade begins a new era in the game, the Victorian Football League becomes the Australian Football League, acknowledging the national expansion, with clubs now in Sydney, Queensland & Perth, and the league adopts the much more national official name. 1980 - 1989 This decade would prove to be arguably the most influential, controversial & changing decade in the games history. Richmond begins the decade thrashing Collingwood in the 1980 Grand Final, the first time runners up medallions are presented to the losing team on the ground following the game.

This would quickly prove an unpopular practice and only occur once more the following season before ceasing. 1970 - 1979 One of the games most historic & tumultuous decades unfolds with some big changes to the way the game is played. Round 1, 1970, Richmond & Fitzroy meet at the MCG. For the first time league football is played on a Sunday with the Queen in attendance. 1960 - 1969 Round 2, 1960, an unusual & rare occurrence leads to a future great tradition, due to torrential rain, the Round is postponed. To make up the time, two matches are played for the very first time on Anzac Day while the remainder are played the following Saturday.

950 - 1959 The decade begins with Essendon sensation John Coleman kicking 100 goals for the second successive season. He becomes the only player to ever kick 100 goals in both his first two seasons of football. 1940 - 1949 Towards the end of the 1939 season the 2nd World War

broke out and this would immediately effect the next decade of the competition though the effect wouldn’t be as deep or lasting as the 1st World War. 1930 - 1939 The 19th man rule is first introduced for the 1930 season, allowing clubs to substitute a player in a match. 930, Collingwood becomes the only club to ever win four successive Premierships. 1920 - 1929 Vic Cumberland of St Kilda retires towards the end of the 1920 season as the oldest ever player at 43 years of age.

Richmond win’s its first Premiership, defeating Collingwood in the 1920 Grand Final; they would follow it up in 1921, winning back to back flags. 1910 - 1919 1910, the League for the first time officially approves player payments after a bribery scandal is uncovered, several Carlton players were found guilty of playing poorly for payment during the finals series.These players would initially be given life bans though some were later overturned. 1897 – 1909 Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Fitzroy, Geelong, Melbourne, St Kilda & South Melbourne make up the newly formed VFL AFL Grounds Victorian Grounds Telstra Dome also known as Docklands Stadium , Colonial Stadium The Docklands Stadium is the southern hemispheres largest indoor stadium.

Seating over 50,000 people with a movable roof the stadium plays host to the AFL football and many international sports including soccer, rugby and cricket.Docklands Stadium has also played host to many of the worlds biggest musical artists, in its first 3 years Kiss, Barbra Streisand, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Robbie Williams and Bruce Springsteen have all played to huge crowds. MCG also known as The 'G' , The MCG - The People's Ground

Like all great inventions, Australian Football did not develop overnight. Its birthplace, however, can be traced to Melbourne in 1858. At that time the needs, ideas and resources of the developing colonial community came together to create a winter diversion called football. Johnson and Grant - Round 20The first steps were far from tentative.

On July 31,1858, a practice match was arranged in Richmond Paddock near the MCG. There were few rules, just men determined to have a kick. Some had experience of football from English public schools, some had no football experience at all. On the same day, Melbourne Grammar School played football against a group of men who called themselves the St Kilda club and the lack of rules caused a fight that ended the game. Skilled Stadium also known as Kardinia park , Shell Stadium , Baytec Stadium Geelong moved to what is now known as Skilled Stadium from its former home ground – Corio Oval in 1941.Since then the ground has played host to the Cats’ most successful eras with six successive top four finishes between 1951 and 56, including premierships in 1951 and 52 as well as four grand final appearances between 1989 and 1995.

Skilled Stadium is currently undergoing a redevelopment which will see additional undercover seating and other amenities added, as well as increasing capacity to approximately 28,000. Interstate Grounds SCG In the grand scheme of things, elite Australian Football and the Sydney Cricket Ground are relatively recent acquaintances.The Sydney Swans have called the SCG ‘home’ since 1982, but cricket, tennis, cycling and horseracing were taking place in Moore Park, where the SCG is situated, during the earliest days of

white settlement. A Trust was created in 1876 to set aside a section of the park and manage what we now know as the Sydney Cricket Ground.

Within ten years, the single wooden stand on the site had been demolished and replaced by a new Members Pavilion. The Hill Stand, Ladies’ Stand and Northern Stand were completed before the turn of the century.The Noble Stand followed in 1936, and from 1973 came a building surge with the construction of the Bradman, Brewongle, O’Reilly and Churchill Stands. The stadium was the principal host for First Grade Rugby League, as well as Soccer and Rugby internationals for almost a century until the opening of the neighbouring Sydney Football Stadium in 1988. It remains the home of first class, Test and One Day International cricket in Sydney and it’s the scene of some of the sport’s finest and most significant moments.

The all-time record SGC crowd is 78,056 for St.George versus South Sydney during the 1965 Rugby League finals. The record single-day cricket attendance is 58,446 (Australia v England, 1928) while 46,168 packed in to watch the Swans play Geelong on 30 August 1997 to register the best crowd for an AFL fixture. The Sydney Cricket Ground’s current seating capacity is 43,562. AAMI Stadium also known as Football Park Conceived in 1971, AAMI Stadium (formerly Football Park) hosted its first SANFL match, between Central Districts and North Adelaide, in May 1974.

The first AFL match played at the stadium was the opening round fixture between Adelaide and Hawthorn in 1991.It was the Crows’ first game in the competition and it resulted in an unforgettable 86 point drubbing of that season’s eventual

Premier. The stadium has benefited enormously from on-going development over the years. In the early days, large tracts of terracing were exposed, without seating and without cover. The record crowd for the ground was achieved in the 1976 SANFL Grand Final between Sturt and Port Adelaide.

66,897 people were able to squeeze into the ground when the entire ‘outer’ offered standing room only. Since then, light towers, media and convention centres, and video scoreboard have been significant enhancements.These days AAMI Stadium is an all-seater stadium, complete with light towers, video scoreboard, and media and convention centres. The ground’s official attendance record for an AFL home-and-away match is 48,522 for Adelaide’s round 22 encounter with Collingwood in 1993.

The GABBA also known as --- Brisbane Cricket Ground The Gabba, located in Woolloongabba, is a 37,600 seat circular sports venue, used predominantly for hosting Australian Football League (Aussie Rules) matches, national and international cricket events.The venue is home to the Brisbane Lions Australian Football Club, Queensland Cricket Association, Queensland Cricketers' Club and the Queensland Bulls National Cricket team. The Gabba has commenced Stage 6 of the Gabba redevelopment to increase the capacity of the venue to 42,000. Subiaco Oval Located just west of the Perth CBD, Subiaco Oval is the home of Western Australian football and has been the home to the West Coast Eagles since the club’s inception in 1987.

The ground has also been home to Fremantle, since it joined the competition in 1995, and now hosts an AFL match every week following the ending of matches being staged at Perth's other venue, the WACA, two years ago. From the first AFL match ever played at the ground

in 1987, when the Eagles came from 33 points down at three-quarter-time to beat Richmond by 14 points, Subiaco has proved to be one of the most daunting venues for visiting teams to travel to. Just four years later the ground became the first outside of Victoria to host an AFL final. The continued popularity of the AFL in Perth has been reflected in the hanges made at Subiaco Oval with the ground’s old terrace standing room areas having been replaced by grandstands with the ground now an all-seater with a capacity of 43,000. And with Perth’s ideal climate it is a great place to watch footy with the footy-mad locals always creating a great atmosphere.

Subiaco Oval is also home to the Eagles’ administration and is the club’s training base while Fremantle also trains at the ground once a week. It is also the home base and grand final venue for the Western Australian Football League as well as being the home ground of local WAFL side Subiaco.Aurora Stadium also known as York Park Aurora Stadium became an AFL venue in season 2001 when Hawthorn hosted Adelaide at Launceston’s number one football venue.

The match was an outstanding success with a full-house packing the picturesque ground, which has recently been re-developed with the help of the Tasmanian government. The Hawks were so pleased with the success of their match against the Crows, which they won narrowly, that this season they have agreed to play two home matches and one pre-season game at Aurora Stadium per year until at least 2010.The first will be against Fremantle in Round Three while the second looms a blockbuster for Tasmanian

footy fans, a re-match of last year’s thrilling semi-final against Port Adelaide in Round Ten.

However while AFL has only just come to York Park, the ground has a long football history. Indeed it hosted one of the most famous matches in Tasmanian football history when a Tasmanian side, mostly made up of players from the old Northern Tasmanian Football Association competition defeated the might of Victoria by seven points.The Tasmanian team didn't have champion Darrel Baldock, and was captained by former Melbourne champion Stuart Spencer while the Victorian team was captained by Bruce Comben and included the likes of John Peck, Ken Fraser, Verdun Howell, Murray Weideman and Bill Goggin. The crowd of 15,600 that witnessed that match was a record crowd for Aurora Stadium until Hawthorn beat Adelaide on May 6 last year in the first AFL game played at the ground.

Marrawah Stadium The move to Football Park in the Marrara Sports Complex in 1991/92 gave the NTFL a permanent base and a national standard facility. The first recorded match of Australian Football in Darwin was a 'one-off' game played in February 1916 on Darwin Town Oval, opposite the old Darwin Hotel. The grandstand features four change rooms, administration areas, undercover seating for 4,500, members bar, function room, media areas and corporate boxes. Manuka Oval Manuka Oval is one of the AFL’s newest venues but also one of its most picturesque.

Located close to Parliament House, it is just ten minutes drive from Canberra airport and is surrounded by the up-market cafes, restaurants and bars of Manuka and Kingston giving visiting fans a total Canberra football experience.Manuka Oval is perhaps best known as the venue

for the annual Prime Ministers’ XI cricket match against the international touring team of each season but has also been used for football since the early 1920’s, even before Federal Parliament transferred to Canberra in 1927. Surrounded by trees, the ground has the look of an English village cricket ground and Victorian football fans will be surprised to learn it is also the ground, which is now home to the old MCG scoreboard. The board was given to Manuka Oval by the MCG Trust as a gift in 1982 and holds pride of place in the recently re-developed stadium.

The ground was first used for AFL matches in 1998 when the Kangaroos beat Port Adelaide in a match memorable for Winston Abraham’s spectacular goalsquare leap – which was named as the Mark of the Year for 1998. Telstra Stadium For two glorious weeks in September 2000, it hosted the track and field and football competitions, as well as the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the greatest Olympic Games, ever. Now, Telstra Stadium enters its second age as a versatile, all-purpose sporting venue for the new millennium. This is about taking the game to the people,” says Swans’ Chief Executive, Kelvin Templeton.

“We intend to showcase the game to the people of the west in the comfort of one of the world’s great stadia. ” Costing $690 million, the stadium dominates the Olympic precinct at Homebush Bay which includes the Showgrounds, Super drome, International Aquatic Centre, Athletics Centre and State Sports Centre. Built to accommodate up to 110,000 Olympic spectators, the stadium’s capacity has been reduced to around 80,000 with the dismantling of the upper-tiers of the northern

and southern stands.Development work on roofing to cover these stands is scheduled for completion in 2003. Telstra Stadium will continue to host major rugby, rugby league and soccer matches, as well as music and cultural events.

The lower tier of seating, retracted for AFL matches, can be brought forward to create a rectangular pitch for rugby and soccer. When configured for Australian Football, the arena will extend 170-metres end-to-end, and 128-metres across. Originally named Stadium Australia, the arena received its current name after a multi-million dollar naming rights deals with Telstra.

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