AFL

AFL may refer to:

Sports

Grand final

A Grand final is a game that decides a sports league's championship (or premiership) winning team, i.e. the conclusive game of a finals (or play-off) series. Synonymous with a championship game in North American sports, grand finals have become a significant part of Australian culture. The earliest competitions to feature a Grand final were Australia's AFL (Australian rules football) and NRL (rugby league football). They influenced other competitions such as soccer's A-League, the National Basketball League, netball's ANZ Championship and European rugby league's Super League to adopt grand finals as well. Most grand finals involve a prestigious award for the player voted best on field.

History

The Anglo-Norman term "grand" to describe a sporting event, documented in England as "grand match" in 1836, was used in Australia from the 1850s. A steeplechase in England has been called the "Grand National Steeple Chase" ("Grand National" alone for short) since at least 1839.

Use of the term in Australian Football dates back to the first organised and widely publicised match between Melbourne Grammar School and Scotch College on August 7, 1858 at Yarra Park, Melbourne (formerly Richmond Park). The game was advertised as the "grand football match" in the Melbourne Morning Herald and several other local newspapers.

AFL Grand Final

The AFL Grand Final is an annual Australian rules football match, traditionally held on the final Saturday in September or the first Saturday in October at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Australia to determine the Australian Football League (AFL) premiership champions for that year. The game has become significant to Australian culture, spawning a number of traditions and surrounding activities which have grown in popularity since the interstate expansion of the VFL in the 1980s and the subsequent creation of the national AFL competition in the 1990s. The 2006 Sweeney Sports Report concluded that the AFL Grand Final has become Australia's most important sporting event, with the largest attendance, metropolitan television audience and overall interest of any annual Australian sporting event.

The winning team of the Grand Final receives the AFL Premiership Cup and the Premiership Flag, and all players in the team receive a gold Premiership Medallion.

Most clubs have played in at least one grand final, the exceptions being recent expansion clubs Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney, and the short-lived University club. Adelaide is the only club to have never lost an AFL Grand Final which it has contested.

Adelaide Football Club

The Adelaide Football Club, nicknamed the Crows, is a professional Australian rules football club that competes in the Australian Football League (AFL). The club is based in Adelaide, South Australia, playing its home matches at Adelaide Oval. The club has its training and administration base at Football Park in West Lakes, where it previously played home matches between 1991 and 2013. The club song is "The Pride of South Australia", to the tune of the Marines' Hymn.

The Crows were formed in 1990 as a composite team owned by the SANFL and played their first season in 1991. They won both the 1997 and 1998 Grand Finals, and have appeared in 12 finals series in their 25-year history.

The club is currently captained by Taylor Walker and coached by Don Pyke. Walker was appointed captain prior to the 2015 season, while Pyke permanently succeeded the late Phil Walsh as head coach in October 2015.

History

Formation

Throughout the 1980s, the Victorian Football League (VFL) began to expand outside of Victoria, firstly by the relocation of a team into New South Wales (Sydney Swans) in 1982, and then the expansion into Western Australia (West Coast Eagles) and Queensland (Brisbane Bears) in 1987. However, the SANFL was against a South Australian team joining the VFL under the financial terms offered throughout the 1980s. To circumvent this, the VFL negotiated directly with both the Port Adelaide and Norwood Football Clubs during the late 1980s, but did not come to an agreement.

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