Victorian Football League
The Victorian Football League (VFL) is the major state-level Australian rules football league in Victoria and, starting from 2021, New South Wales and Queensland. The league evolved from the former Victorian Football Association (VFA), and has been known by its current name since 1996. For historical purposes, the present VFL is referred to as the VFA/VFL, to distinguish it from the present day Australian Football League that was known until 1990 as the Victorian Football League and is referred to as the VFL/AFL.
The VFA was formed in 1877 and is the second-oldest Australian rules football league, replacing the loose affiliation of clubs that had been the hallmark of the early years of the game. Initially serving a primarily administrative function, the VFA premiership served as the top level of club competition in Victoria until 1896. The VFA became the secondary level of club competition from 1897 after its eight strongest clubs seceded to form the VFL/AFL. From 1897 until 1994, the VFA remained independent from the VFL as Victoria's secondary senior club competition. Although always much less popular than the VFL/AFL, the VFA enjoyed peaks of popularity in the 1940s with a faster-paced rival codeof rules, and in the 1970s bolstered by playing on Sundays at a time when the VFL was played solely on Saturdays.
Since 1995, the league has been administered by AFL Victoria (and its predecessors), and serves as one of the second-tier regional Australian semi-professional competitions which sits underneath the fully professional Australian Football League. In 2022, it will comprise 21 teams from throughout the eastern states, nine of which have a continuous VFA heritage. Prior to 2021, the New South Wales- and Queensland-based clubs played in the North East Australian Football League until the NEAFL merged into the VFL, expanding the competition to those states. Since 2000, the VFL has served partially as a reserves competition for the AFL, with some AFL clubs fielding their reserves teams in the VFL and others affiliatedsuch that their reserves player can play in VFL teams.
AFL Victoria also operates a women's football competition under the Victorian Football League brand, known as the VFL Women's, which was established in 2016.
The Victorian Football Association (VFA) was founded on 17 May 1877 at the meeting of club secretaries immediately preceding the 1877 season. It was formed out of a desire to provide a formal administrative structure to the governance of the sport, and it had the power to impose binding decisions on its members on matters including the Laws of the Game, player eligibility and other disputes, as well as to facilitate intercolonial football. Decisions were made based on a vote of the Board of Management, which was composed of two delegates from each senior club,[1] a structure which was retained until the late 1980s. It replaced a system under which the secretaries of the senior clubs met at the beginning of each year to decide on matters of mutual interest, but the system was informal and disputes often went unresolved.[2][3]
The five foundation senior clubs in the Melbourne metropolitan area were Albert-park, Carlton, Hotham (later North Melbourne), Melbourne and St Kilda. Provincial clubs were also eligible for senior representation on the Association, even though most seldom played matches against the metropolitan teams; Geelong, the nearest provincial club to the metropolis, was the most prominent provincial club, joining the Association in 1877[4] and playing regularly against metropolitan clubs by 1880. There was no formal system of promotion and relegation between the senior and junior levels, with it largely at a club's discretion whether or not it joined the Association as a paying senior member. The affiliation fee for senior clubs was initially set at one guinea.
