By Bill Turianski on 5 May 2017; twitter.com/billsportsmaps.
Links…
-AFL official site…
-2017 AFL season (en.wikipedia.org).
-theroar.com.au/aussie-rules.
-Aussie rules scores/fixtures/ladder, etc..scorespro.com/aussie-rules.
-If you are new to Aussie rules football and would like to see an explanation of the rules, and/or a brief thumbnail-history of the AFL, you can see all that on my first map-and-post on the subject, here:
[from April 2015] Australian rules football – the Australian Football League (AFL), 2015 location-map with: rules (in general), clubs-history-chart, and chart of 2014 attendances with titles listed./ Plus: 2014 champions the Hawthorn Hawks.
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2016 Grand Final champions – Western Bulldogs: their second Premiership (title) and first title in 62 years…
Photo and Image credits above – Jason Johannisen, photo by Tim Carrafa at heraldsun.com.au/sport. Tom Boyd, photo by Getty Images via pinterest.com. Liam Picken, photo by Graham Denholm/Fairfax Media via standard.net.au. Tory Dickson, photo by Alex Coppel at theaustralian.com.au/sport. Shot of clinching goal celebration, photo by Phil Hillyard at heraldsun.com.au/sport.
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Australian rules football – the Australian Football League (AFL), 2017 location-map, with map showing all venues for 2017 AFL season; plus 2016 attendance figures & titles list.
2017 AFL, location-map with titles chart & attendances…
The main map shows all the venues for the 2017 season (17 venues), plus of course the 18 AFL teams’ crests and their primary-locations. At the far-upper left of the map-page is a small map showing the venue-location in Shanghai, China (see 3 paragraphs below). [Note: if you are confused why the Wikipedia page for the AFL currently shows there being 16 venues (and not 17 venues) for the 2017 AFL season, that is because the (recently-renovated) venue in Ballarat, Victoria is not included there...and the Western Bulldogs will be in fact playing one of their home games there (at the 11-K-capacity Eureka Statium), this season (on 19 August, 2017).]
On the upper-right-hand-side is a chart of all the AFL teams, arranged by titles. The chart lists the 6 following items for each team…
A). Club colours, crest & jersey-pattern.
B). Premiers (titles), with year of last premiership. The most-titled clubs in the AFL are the Essendon Bombers and the Carlton Blues, both of whom have won 16 Premiers (but neither has been AFL champion since 2000).
C). Australian state that the team is located in (10 teams from Victoria; and 2 teams each from: New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia).
D). Year-of-establishment as an AFL team (with Melbourne-to-Sydney franchise-move [of 1981-82] noted).
E). Seasons in the VFL/AFL [2017 will be the 121st season of the VFL/AFL).
F). Premiers-per-season percentage [Premiers (Titles) divided by seasons]. The best percentage is owned by the Brisbane Lions (who have won a Premier every 6.67 seasons) followed by the Hawthorn Hawks (a Premier won every 7.14 seasons), then the Essendon Bombers (a Premier won every 7.37 seasons), then the Carlton Blues (a Premier won every 7.5 seasons), then the Collingwood Magpies (a Premier won every 8 seasons).
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Since its founding in 1897, the VFL/AFL has played regular-season matches at 42 different venues…
From the Australian Football League page at Wikipedia…“Throughout the history of the VFL/AFL, there have been a total of 42 different grounds used…/…The largest capacity ground in use is the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), which has a capacity of over 100,000 people, and hosts the Grand Final each year. The MCG is shared by five [of the 10 Melbourne] teams as a home ground, whilst the other grounds used as home venues by multiple teams are Docklands Stadium in Melbourne [four of the 10 Melbourne teams primarily], Adelaide Oval in Adelaide [both Adelaide-based teams], and Subiaco Oval in Perth [both Perth-based teams]. The AFL has had exclusive ownership of Docklands Stadium (commercially known as Etihad Stadium) since late 2016.” (excerpt from en.wikipedia.org/Australian Football League/Venues).
Alternate venues for the 2017 AFL regular season…
I have expanded the original location-map I made 2 years ago by including all venues – 17 venues – that will host regular-season games in the 2017 AFL season. (You can also see 16 of the 17 venues at the following link at Wikipedia: venues used during the 2017 AFL season.) Included in that list of venues is a stadium in Shanghai, China: the 25,000-capacity Jiangwan Stadium, which will be re-configured to host Aussie rules football with a temporary-15-K-capacity, and will host a regular-season AFL match between the Port Adelaide Power and the Gold Coast Suns, on 14 May 2017.
-See this, Port, Suns to face off in Shanghai in round eight clash (by Dinny Navaratnam on 16 Oct. 2016, from afl.com.au).
-Also see this, Beating NFL and NBA to the punch: Port Adelaide bring real AFL deal to Shanghai (by Sam Agars on 3 Feb. 2017, from the South China Morning Post at scmp.com).
Aside from AFL regular-season games played previously in New Zealand, this will be the AFL’s first overseas regular-season match [ie, outside of Austalasia]. And, as pointed out in the article from the South China Morning Post linked-to above, the AFL match in Shanghai in May 2017 will be the first regular-season game played in China by any foreign professional league. In other words, the Australian Football League has beaten the NFL and the NBA (and the Premier League, for that matter), in being the first foreign major league to play a regular season game in the potentially-vastly-lucrative market that is China.
Many AFL teams regularly play matches outside of their home venues…
The Hawthorn Hawks and the North Melbourne Kangaroos both play a considerable percentage of their home regular-season games in the State of Tasmania (which is the southern-most of the 6 Australian States, and is an island located 240 km (150 mi) to the south of the Australian mainland). For 17 years now (since 2001), the Hawthorne Hawks have played some of their regular-season home matches in Launceston, Tasmania (which has a population of only around 86,000). There, Hawthorn play at York Park [aka the University of Tasmania Stadium], which has a capacity of 21,000. These days Hawthorn play four of their eleven home regular-season matches there. If Hawthorne played all their home matches at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (and not just 7 of their 11 home matches at the MCG), they would probably draw at-or-near-to the highest in the AFL. Because when you do the math, the 13.8 K per game they drew in Launceston, Tasmania last season depressed Hawthorne’s average attendance to the point that they were actually drawing highest in the league – on average – for their Melbourne home matches at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (they averaged 49.6 K at the MCG, a figure which is about 2.6 K higher than the 47.0 K that the top-drawing Adelaide Crows drew in 2016). Tasmania Tourism is also a major sponsor of the Hawthorne Hawks (as you can see in the jersey-photo below, with “Tasmania” emblazoned prominently on the Hawks’ gear).
Photo credits above – Photo of Launceston, Tasmania unattributed at realestate.com.au/neighbourhoods/launceston-tas. Photo inside York Park, Launceston, Tasmania for Hawthorne Hawks match, photo by city of Launceston at launceston.tas.gov.au/Events/AFL-2017-Hawthorn-v-Brisbane. Hawthorne 2017 jersey, photo from jerseys.com.au/products/hawthorn-hawks-2017-home-guernsey.
Another AFL team that plays in Tasmania is the North Melbourne Kangaroos…
Since 2012, the North Melbourne Kangaroos have played three of their eleven home regular-season matches in the Tasmanian capital-city of Hobart (the population of Greater Hobart is around 221,000). There, North Melbourne play at the Bellerive Oval, which has a capacity of 20,000.
To round out all the rest of the alternate home-match-venues for 2017…
-The Melbourne Demons play two of their eleven home regular-season matches in the sparsely-populated Northern Territory, with one match in Darwin, NT and one match in Alice Springs, NT.
-Since 2014, the Western Bulldogs have been playing one of their eleven home regular-season matches in Cairns, York Peninsula, Queensland. Starting in 2017, the Western Bulldogs also will begin playing one other regular-season home match in a venue about 65 miles west of Melbourne, in Ballarat, VIC.
-The newest AFL team, the Greater Western Sydney Giants, play three of their eleven home regular-season games in the Australian capital, in Canberra, ACT.
In all but the latter of these alternate-home-venues mentioned above, the shift in venue means a considerable decrease in the teams’ average attendances. But the teams see the benefits of lucrative sponsorship deals and expanded team-support, and these things outweigh the ticket-revenue-shortfalls of the alternate-venues. And likewise, with respect to the game being played in China…if the match in Shanghai works out well for the Port Adelaide Power – and for the AFL in general – then it is very probable that a regular-season game in China will become an annual feature of the Australian Football League.
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Sources for map page:
Thanks to all at these links…
-Attendances (2016 season): afltables.com/afl/afl_index.html.
-Dates of establishment: Australian Football League/Current clubs.
-Titles: List of Australian Football League premiers. (en.wikipedia.org).
-Rules: Australian rules football; Australian rules football playing field (en.wikipedia.org).
-Blank maps on map page…
-Thanks to Ssolbergj for globe-map of Australia, File:Australia (orthographic projection).svg (commons.wikimedia.org).
-Thanks to NordNordWest for blank map of Australia, File:Australia location map.svg (en.wikipedia.org).’-Thanks to TUBS for blank map of China showing Shanghai, File:Shanghai in China (+all claims hatched).svg.
-Jersey Icons…Thanks to thejoesbloggsblog for most of the jersey-pattern icons on the chart on the map page at Australian Football League/Current clubs (en.wikipedia.org). Thanks to the AFLstore for Western Eagles’ jersey-icon, theaflstore.com.au/west-coast-eagles.
-Thanks to Port Adelaide FC’s twitter-feed, twitter.com/PAFC, for the article from the South China Morning Post.
-For general historical info, thanks to australianfootball.com.
-Thanks to the contributors at Australian Football League (en.wikipedia.org).
-Thanks to AFL Tables site for attendances and for all-time list of AFL venues, afltables.com/afl/venues/overall.html.
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