Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: What is the biggest event in the Australian Football League?
The league currently consists of 18 teams spread over five of Australia's six states (Tasmania being the exception). Matches have been played in all states and mainland territories of Australia, as well as in New Zealand and China (although no professional teams or leagues exist outside Australia) to promote the sport abroad. The AFL season currently consists of a pre-season competition (currently branded as the "JLT Community Series"), followed by a 23-round regular (or "home-and-away") season, which runs during the Australian winter (March to September). The team with the best record after the home-and-away series is awarded the "minor premiership." The top eight teams then play off in a four-round finals series, culminating in the AFL Grand Final, which is held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground each year. The grand final winner is termed the "premiers", and is awarded the premiership cup. The current premiers are the West Coast Eagles.
In addition to the United Kingdom, Australia announced its intention to bid for the hosting rights, despite hosting the previous World Cup in 2008. The Australian Rugby League had been preparing a rival bid due to the success of the 2008 event but the business plan presented by the Rugby Football League for the UK to be the host was accepted by the RLIF at a meeting in July 2009. The event forms part of what is being dubbed a 'Golden Decade' in British Sport.
The first professional football leagues in Australia were the Australian Football League, and the National Rugby League. Up until the late 2000s, there were three major football codes competing every weekend, which included Australian rules, rugby league and rugby union. Unlike in Europe and the United States, professional clubs tend to be member run organisations instead of single owner, for profit businesses. The major football codes and professional leagues in the country all watch what their competition does in order to improve their own strategic picture in the Australian sporting landscape.
ABC Sport also hold the radio rights to several Australian and international sporting events, including Australian Football League, National Basketball League, National Rugby League, Australian international cricket games, the Olympics and selected Ford Ranger One-Day Cup games, amongst other major sporting events.
Anti-siphoning laws in Australia cover specific listed events, such as all Olympic Games and the Commonwealth Games, the FIFA World Cup, Rugby World Cup, and Rugby League World Cup finals, events in major sports (such as association football, cricket, and rugby tests) that involve Australian senior national teams or are hosted by Australia, and culturally-significant events such as the Australian Football League and National Rugby League premierships, the State of Origin series, all games in the Australian Open, the Melbourne Cup horse race, the Bathurst 1000, the Australian Grand Prix, and the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix among others.
The name "Australian football" was in use outside of Victoria by the late 19th century. A variant of this, acknowledging the popularity of the sport in New Zealand, was "Australasian football". The 1908 Jubilee Australasian Football Carnival featured a team from New Zealand, but the popularity of the sport declined there after World War I. In 1927, the Australasian Football Council changed its name to the Australian National Football Council, to acknowledge that the sport was no longer being played competitively in New Zealand. State leagues were encouraged to include the term "Australian National" in their title, with the South Australian Football League (SAFL) becoming the South Australian National Football League (SANFL) in 1927, the Tasmanian Football League (TFL) becoming the Tasmanian Australian National Football League (TANFL) in 1928, and the West Australian Football League (WAFL) becoming the Western Australian National Football League (WANFL) in 1931. It was proposed that the Victorian Football League (VFL) become the Victorian Australian National Football League; however, this did not occur.
The National Premier Leagues Western Australia is a regional Australian semi-professional soccer league comprising teams from Western Australia. The league name is often abbreviated to NPL Western Australia or NPL WA. As a subdivision of the National Premier Leagues, the league is sits at the highest level of the Western Australian league system (Level 2 of the overall Australian league system). The competition is administered by Football West, the governing body of the sport in the state. In 2014, the league – formerly known as the Football West State League Premier Division – was rebranded into what exists today.
In the Australian state of Victoria, the sport of Australian rules football is the most popular football code. The game's popularity in Victoria stems from its origins in Melbourne in the 1850s, with the first club (the Melbourne Football Club) and the first league (the Victorian Football Association) both based in the city. Ten of the eighteen teams participating in the Australian Football League (AFL) are based in Victoria, as a result of the league's origins as the Victorian Football League (VFL). The Melbourne Cricket Ground, with a capacity of 100,024 people, is considered the "spiritual home" of the game, and hosts the sport's largest event, the AFL Grand Final, yearly.
Due to the popularity of Australian rules football, particularly in southern Australia, most of Australia's largest stadiums by capacity are used for Australian rules football; and it is therefore common to use those stadiums for other high-drawing events, particularly sporting events. Sports such as rugby and soccer can be readily played on an Australian rules football arena, as their rectangular fields are small enough to be set on the larger oval.
In addition to the sport's two biggest leagues, the Tasmanian Australian National Football League (TANFL) held two wartime Lightning Premierships, both in 1941, and many smaller leagues also held events. Most notably, the Broken Hill Football League, staged a "Patriotic Premiership" on 6 July 1940, one week before the inaugural SANFL event, which consisted of a four-team knock-out tournament, with matches played at just under half-length (two periods of twenty minutes without time-on).
Melbourne is where Australian rules football originated in the 1850s—the world's first codified game of football and the most popular sport in Australia by attendance and viewership. The city is home to nine of the eighteen teams that constitute the Australian Football League (AFL), whose five Melbourne games per week attract an average of 40,000 people per game. The AFL Grand Final, one of the biggest sporting events in Australia, is played on the last Saturday of September at the sport's "spiritual home", the 100,000 capacity Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). Another significant Melbourne-based event on the AFL calendar is the Anzac Day clash between rival clubs Collingwood and Essendon. The city is also home to nine out of thirteen teams competing in the semi-professional Victorian Football League. Since 1999, the city has been the biennial host of the International Rules series involving the Australian national team and the Irish national team. The Australian Football International Cup is staged every three years in Melbourne.
The 2007 AFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the Geelong Football Club and the Port Adelaide Football Club, held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne on 29 September 2007. It was the 111th annual grand final of the Australian Football League (formerly the Victorian Football League), staged to determine the premiers for the 2007 AFL season. The match, attended by 97,302 spectators, was won by Geelong by a margin of 119 points, the biggest in VFL/AFL grand final history. The victory marked Geelong's seventh premiership win, and ended its 44-year premiership drought.
In 1986, the West Australian Football League and Queensland Australian Football League were awarded licences to field expansion teams in the VFL, leading to the establishment of the West Coast Eagles and Brisbane Bears, who both joined the league in 1987. These expansion team licences were awarded on payment of multimillion-dollar fees which were not required of the existing VFL clubs. In 1989 financial troubles nearly forced Footscray and Fitzroy to merge, but a fundraising event from Footscray supporters stopped the proposed merger at the eleventh hour.
In 2007, "What's the Score? A survey of cultural diversity and racism in Australian sport" conducted by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) said that "racial abuse and vilification is commonplace in Australian sport... despite concerted efforts to stamp it out". The report said that Aboriginal and other ethnic groups are under-represented in Australian sport, and suggests they are turned off organised sport because they fear racial vilification. Despite the finding, indigenous participation in Australian sport is widespread. In 2009, about 90,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were participating in Australian Rules Football alone and the Australian Football League (AFL) encouraged their participation through the Kickstart Indigenous programs "as the vehicle to improve the quality of life in Indigenous communities, not only in sport, but in the areas of employment, education and health outcomes". Similarly, Australia's second most popular football code encourages participation through events like the NSW Aboriginal Rugby League Knockout and the Indigenous All Stars Team.
The AFL Under 18 Championships are the annual national Australian rules football championships for players aged 18 years or younger and includes teams from each Australian state or Territory. The competition is monitored by AFL recruiters and frequently seen as the second biggest pathway for junior players to the fully professional Australian Football League. The competition is currently sponsored by the National Australia Bank. The competition receives an increasing amount of coverage in the media, however still lags behind the TAC Cup in terms of interest in Victoria.
Australian rules football in Canada is a minor participation sport. The governing body for the sport in the country is AFL Canada. The sport has been played in the country since 1989 when the first league was formed. The sport is quickly becoming popular with the Ontario Australian Football League being the biggest outside of Australia. There are Canadian national teams with the Canada national Australian rules football team the men's team, and a women's national team both who regularly play international matches and play in the Australian Football International Cup which is essentially a World Cup for all countries apart from Australia which is the only place where the sport is played professionally. Mike Pyke, a native of Victoria, British Columbia and a former Canada Rugby International, became the first Canadian to play in the Australian Football League when he was drafted by the Sydney Swans in 2008. Pyke went on to become the first Canadian to play in an AFL premiership (championship-winning) team when the Swans won the 2012 AFL Grand Final.
In 1972, the first exhibition match of the AFL was played at The Oval in London.
By 1987, the game had become an annual event, missing only some years.
With a large number of ex-patriate Australians, interest in the game grew and small crowds of up to 10,000 were in attendance for the event in some years.
Interest and crowds grew further with the change of the VFL to the Australian Football League. 
Highlights during this time included large crowds for the Australian Football League's West Coast Eagles v. Collingwood in 1997 with an attendance of 14,000 and the match between Richmond and Essendon in 2002 which drew 13,000.
The sporting rivalry between Australian rules football clubs and is the biggest and longest lasting rivalry in the Australian Football League (AFL). Despite the two clubs having not met in a final since 1988 the rivalry is regarded by some as being among the most historic and significant in Australian sport.
Fantasy football is a fantasy sport in which competitors score points based on the performance of players in the Australian Football League. The two biggest competitions are the Herald Sun's Supercoach competition and the AFL's Dream Team competition. Both games are designed and run by Vapormedia.
Third kits are commonplace in professional European association football and in some professional European rugby union clubs. Alternate guernseys or jerseys are common in Australia's two biggest domestic leagues, the Australian Football League (Aussie rules) and National Rugby League (rugby league).
The United States Australian Football League is the biggest League of Australian rules football in the United States and the New York team is called The New York Magpies it is affiliated with the Collingwood Football Club.
1978 in sports describes the year's events in world sport.Victorian Football League
South Australian National Football League
Western Australian National Football League
Men's professional
Men's amateur
Women's professionalSteeplechases
Hurdle races
Flat races
Both divisions have their own programs for the season. There is a promotion and relegation system that received criticism in 2014 following the ultimately unsuccessful decision to relegate Echunga in the same season that they won the Central Division premiership. It is the second biggest leagues in South Australia after the South Australian Amateur Football League.
The Australian Football League stages the highest-level senior Australian rules football competition in the country. However, since the late 1980s, when the former Victorian Football League expanded interstate to become the modern Australian Football League, there has not been a league-wide reserves competition; and, since 2000, there has been no dedicated reserves competition of any kind. As a result, AFL-listed players who are not selected in their senior teams are made eligible to play in one of the second-tier state leagues: the Victorian Football League, South Australian National Football League, West Australian Football League, or North East Australian Football League. The system used to accommodate AFL-listed players within these leagues varies considerably from state to state.
The main sports played professionally in Adelaide are Australian Rules football, association football (soccer), cricket, netball, and basketball. Adelaide is the home of two Australian Football League teams: the Adelaide Football Club and Port Adelaide Football Club, and one A-League soccer team, Adelaide United. A local Australian rules football league, the SANFL, is made up of 10 teams from around Adelaide. The SANFL has been in operation since 1877 when it began as the South Australian Football Association (SAFL) before changing its name to the SANFL in 1927. The SANFL is the oldest surviving football league of any code played in Australia. Adelaide has developed a strong culture of attracting crowds to major sporting events.[127] Until the completion of the 2012–14 renovation and upgrade of the Adelaide Oval, most large sporting events took place at either AAMI Stadium (the then home base of the Adelaide Crows, and the then Port Adelaide's home game venue), or the historic Adelaide Oval, home of the Southern Redbacks and the Adelaide Strikers cricket teams. Since completion of the upgrade, home games for Adelaide Crows and Port Adelaide now take place at Adelaide Oval.