Talk:Australian Football League

Merging of the Brisbane Lions and Fitzroy

This article incorrectly claims that Brisbane was a new club introduced in 1986 as the Brisbane Bears, and that the merger between them and the Fitzroy Lions did not occur until 1996, suggesting that the Fitzroy Lions continued through to 1996, however this is not the case. Brisbane was created by Fitzroy moving to Brisbane (as South Sydney had a couple years earlier), with a view to becoming the Brisbane Lions, however the current Brisbane City soccer team were also known as the Lions, and a protest meant that the name of the Brisabane Lions could not be used, thus the change to the Brisbane Bears. Future changes to the national soccer competition meant that the Brisbane City (Lions) soccer club was no longer used and their name amended, thereby allowing the Brisbane Bears to be changed to the Brisbane Lions and giving Fitzroy supporters a chance to reinstate their love of their old club. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.20.20.129 (talk) 03:47, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

um, no. You are wrong. Maybe we need an Australian rules football conspiracy theories page to allow crazy ideas like this to be published (only kidding, that's what bigfooty is for!) The-Pope (talk) 04:36, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I know it could all be alleged to be part of a huge conspiracy, but the OP should look at http://www.fitzroyfc.com.au/lions.html. A quote - "After 100 years of competition in the VFL-AFL, Fitzroy said goodbye to the city of Melbourne in Round 21 1996 in front of 48,884 people, against Richmond. They lost lost by 151 points. It has been called by many as "the saddest day in 100 years of AFL football". A lap of Fitzroy's past players and heroes from their long and distinguished history took place around the MCG before the match..." HiLo48 (talk) 05:22, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I realise this is an old thread but to clarify - the AFL club settled with the soccer club in early 1997 to allow the AFL club to trade as the Brisbane Lions.[1] Hack (talk) 04:24, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Merging the Clubs and Expansion sections

Does anyone think that these two sections should be merged? They contain pretty much the same information. Either that or the Expansion info under clubs should be moved into the dedicated Expansion section. It seems strange the way it is and doesn't read well. Anderch (talk) 01:45, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Article requires a total rewrite

This article is to say the least is really poorly written and it requires a total rewrite. I actually find it difficult to read because it is not structured well and has repetitive info and also a lot of info particularly in the main table that doesn't need to be there. For example: 1. The history section should directly follow the intro and contain much of the information that is in the Intro, expansion sections and existing small history section. Further the History of the AFL page should be merged into this one. 2. Why is there an empty Guernsey column in the table???? also membership info is not required and in addition the location and training ground columns should be merged. 3. The former clubs section should also be made part of the history section too with the table scrapped and 4. the Intro is way too long (see point 1.) This are just a few things wrong with the page. I am just bringing this up to promote discussion, as input is needed. Anderch (talk) 07:30, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I broadly agree with you. Do you have the time and skills to tackle it? HiLo48 (talk) 08:28, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Skills yes. Time not really. It is something that would be done over a period of time. Also two other pages that are structured well and are good to get ideas on layout and the sort of content that should be included are the NRL article and also the NBA Article. Anderch (talk) 12:02, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

All I have made some major changes to this article and restructured it, My hope is that it now reads better. It still requires a bit more editing to condense it a bit but the structure is there now and it flows a lot better. I have also removed a lot of information that was doubled up and moved information around in the article. Anderch (talk) 04:11, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Though I'm hugely supportive of the changes made, is there a reason why, throughout the article, clubs are referred to inclusive of their nickname? (ie: the 'Hawthorn Hawks' are the current premiers and the club table which lists clubs as 'Collingwood Magpies', 'Port Adelaide Power' etc...) Is this not informal and against Wikipedia policy with respect to this issue? See here: Wikiproject: Australian rules football style guide Jono52795 (talk) 07:48, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes. It's also a quite unnatural way to refer to the clubs. No regular fan would use the names that way. HiLo48 (talk) 07:59, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

I can't believe there is a style guide! really! Anyway if it really bothers you change it but I was just trying to simplify it. AFL Club names are generally confusing when you think about it because some use nicknames and some don't in their names and there really is no uniformity. Anderch (talk) 06:54, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

If you find it confusing, maybe you shouldn't be touching that aspect of the AFL article. Hundreds of thousands of fans of each club know about the naming tradition of their club, so you will inevitably be picked up if you get it wrong. Anyway, wouldn't the names be clear at the individual club articles? HiLo48 (talk) 07:44, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

The AFL uses nicknames for some teams and others not, but it's not immediately obvious why (other than the Dogs, and perhaps Lions) http://www.afl.com.au/afl/ladder. OF course Wikipedia has its own conventions.

The AFL is NOT the VFL.

This needs to be reflected throughout. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.166.41.145 (talk) 15:23, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

If that's a justification for claiming Port Adelaide's earlier premierships as AFL premierships, which you did on the Australian Football League page without an Edit summary, it doesn't work. The VFL was effectively just renamed to the AFL. Carlton didn't have to join the league. The league's name changed around it. Its premiership count simply continued on. Port Adelaide had to join the league from outside. Premierships from that outside competition do not count in the AFL. HiLo48 (talk) 16:37, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Premierships

There is little point comparing the table for current clubs to the NFL, as the current NFL is a merge of two leagues, the NFL (before 1970) and the AFL (American Football League), the AFL (Australian Football League) has always been one league, it just changed its name, it's not a merging of two leagues. All non-Victorian teams joined the league (except for Sydney), so to say that half the teams weren't in the VFL is moot, because the league (as a whole) has not changed. The NFL has also had different determinations of championships, before the Super Bowl, it was the champion of each league (NFL and AFL), the Super Bowl was then the determination of champions in the whole NFL league due to the separate conferences. The winner of the grand final has always been deemed the champion (premiers) in the VFL/AFL (except for the round-robins in 1897 and 1924, but were subsequently deemed premiers and it was not an active change in determination like the NFL). Just because a separate sport has a certain table, doesn't mean the AFL should have the same, they have been governed differently. Also there is no point in comparing to the EPL because of the relegation system. Flickerd (talk) 11:51, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

In my opinion both VFL premierships and AFL premierships are premierships. However there should be at least some distinguishing between the two as some were won as a state league and others were won as a national league. Thejoebloggsblog (talk) 01:59, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Current convention says that they're *not* distinguishable though, portraying them in this way is OR. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.171.155.208 (talk) 02:33, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Give this a read. The AFL Commission in early June ruled that clubs can acknowledge their premiership successes outside of the VFL. <http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/afl/teams/port-adelaide/afl-commission-accepts-all-clubs-can-acknowledge-their-success-from-outside-the-vflafl-competition/news-story/d7ab969dff3bfe01e75933e899e8b87a> — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.169.44.221 (talk) 07:08, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Can't see how that is relevant. The original "problem" here was j.bloggs removing premiership tallies from a table, which was rebuffed. Then suggesting a separation of VFL and AFL titles, which hasn't changed in its not-ness. Quoth Fitzpatrick: “But it has been the one organisation since its establishment"

Club Table

This has been an issue for almost a year now with Thejoebloggsblog constantly making changes to the table and being reverted by various editors. Maybe try and discuss it here first. As for my recent reverts (ignoring for the moment Thejoebloggsblog's regular attempts to separate pre-1990 premierships from post-1990), I removed the "Age" column because it's already covered by establishment which is sortable, the "years in VFL/AFL" because it had factual errors and is redundant to the joining the league column (sortable), expanded the little cup image to say "Premierships" so people can understand it without hovering, removed frequency which is just a weird stat that has no consensus and is not something you see in official AFL records, and removed the league joined from column because it largely seems irrelevant to me for an article about this league (it also is borderline misleading with GWS/GC). I left most recent premiership even though I'm not totally sold on it, but removed the 'time since' in brackets as unnecessary. I removed the asterisk for "founding member of former league" as irrelevant and the asterisk for "founding member of this league" as unnecessary. I removed all the hovertext about how many flags teams had won in previous leagues as irrelevant. Jenks24 (talk) 14:24, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

The Australian Football League is a closed professional competition, i.e. it does not have promotion and relegation. The closest professional sports league in this regard is the National Football League on its team table it has a guide to the foundation clubs of the competition. The frequency table allows a better comparison of clubs as some have been in the competition 100+ years longer than the others. I also think previous league is relevant as it is unique feature of the Australian football league that almost every team comes from a previous league. I will make compromises as you address them. Frequency is premierships per year. It doesn't distinguish VFL/AFL. Thejoebloggsblog (talk) 14:57, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

I guess if you want to add back the asterisks for founding members of the VFL/AFL I wouldn't argue about it – it seems a bit pointless to me though as surely people can just see that the 1897 clubs are the founding members. I disagree about previous league, I think it is misleading for GWS/GC as they didn't really "join" form those leagues – the AFL only put them in there for a year to help get their footing. And for the others I'm not sure it's particularly relevant, but I'll see what others think (even if they are added back though, I strongly disagree with having huge chunks of hovertext explaining how many flags they won in previous leagues as that is definitely irrelevant to this league). I understand what frequency is, but it's an odd statistic (in this case) that I doubt you would find in any official AFL publication and it's just a weird comparison to be making between teams – obviously flags are harder to win in an 18-team competition than in a 8-team one. Jenks24 (talk) 15:28, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

@Thejoebloggsblog: So while I've been typing out this response you've just gone ahead and added all your changes back? Super. Why even bother having a discussion? Jenks24 (talk) 15:31, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

@Jenks24: Im fiddling around. I think having previous leagues are important because it shows where they came from. I agree with you about GWS and GC though.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Thejoebloggsblog (talk • contribs)

Sandboxes are for fiddling around, not the article space. Jevansen (talk) 23:46, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

@Jevansen: I'm already using my sandbox, I was just trying to accommodate @Jenks24: indication that there is significant variance in seasons played by clubs, even foundation clubs, due to war.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Thejoebloggsblog (talk • contribs)

Are you meaning to count 2016 in the tally, GC and GWS do, the rest don't. You've also combined the Brisbanes, which has some official backing, but elsewhere on WP, they're usually treated as separate entities.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.171.155.208 (talk • contribs)

I've removed the frequency again. It is not a valid comparison to be making and is not something that's done by the AFL, we should not be doing it, especially here on the main article. I've also removed the excessive tooltips as unnecessary (people do not need an explanation that the VFL was renamed the AFL when hovering over "premierships", it's obvious it refers to premierships won in this league). Likewise I've removed a few of the "VFL/AFL"s that were littered through it, it's obviously referring to this league. I'm still not sure the seasons column adds anything of value, except I suppose to see that a couple of clubs missed years in WWI. But if you feel strongly about it I won't debate it. Jenks24 (talk) 14:44, 6 May 2016 (UTC)