The Australian National Football Council (ANFC) was the national governing body for Australian rules football in Australia from 1906 until 1995. The council was a body of delegates representing each of the principal leagues which controlled the sport in their respective regions. The council was the owner of the laws of the game and managed interstate administrative and football matters. Its function was superseded by the Australian Football League Limited (AFL).
The council underwent several name changes during its existence, and at different times it was also known as: the Australasian Football Council (1906–1919), the Australian Football Council (1920–1927 and 1973–1975), the National Football League (NFL) (1975–1989) and the National Australian Football Council (NAFC) (1989–1995).
Structure and purpose Throughout its history, the ANFC was the top level administrative body for the sport of Australian rules football. In this capacity, it served four main functions: It was the owner of the official laws of Australian rules football, with the intention that the sport be played under uniform rules across Australia. Any rule changes were discussed and approved within the council, and any changes were binding on all affiliated bodies nationally (although exceptions, known as "domestic rules" could be made with the permission of the council – amateur football, for example, was given special permission to use an order-off rule to control rough play). It established and supervised the processes of interstate player clearances and transfers. This included maintaining rules relating to residential qualifications for interstate clearances, intervening in disputes between the states, and ensuring that the clearance systems were enforced. It sought to develop and promote the game in markets where rugby football pre-dominated, including Sydney, country New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT. It did this by taking levies from the leagues where Australian rules football was dominant, and re-distributing those funds to the other markets for advertising and propaganda purposes, as well as arranging exhibition matches. It was responsible for the organisation of interstate matches, including the triennial Interstate Carnivals.
The structure of the council mirrored that of most football leagues in Australia at the time: each affiliated full member league appointed a delegate (or, in the early years, two delegates) to the council to act on its behalf in discussions and votes. The decision-making process followed by the council was that delegates would meet, generally every one to three years, to discuss and vote on proposed changes. All changes to on-field or off-field laws needed to be passed by a supermajority vote – this was originally a three-quarters majority, then later became a double majority which required an overall simple majority plus minimum number of the designated major states to vote in favour. The council also elected an executive committee which managed the game's administrative matters.
The affiliated full members of the council, which were the various state leagues such as the Victorian Football League and South Australian National Football League, became the controlling administrative bodies for football in their states. Smaller leagues within each state would affiliate with the controlling body, bringing all affiliated leagues in the country hierarchically under the influence of the ANFC.
The council maintained control by forbidding its affiliates from competing in matches against unaffiliated bodies without permission, and with the threat of excluding from the council any leagues, players or clubs who defied its rules. This meant that leagues could face exclusion if they played representative matches against un-affiliated leagues or their clubs without permission. It also meant that players who broke the ANFC's transfer rules by switching to an un-affiliated league without a clearance would be banned from affiliated leagues. Any penalties imposed by the council were inherently valid only within the council-affiliated competitions, and there was nothing to stop a league or player from ignoring council rules and carrying on in an unaffiliated system – and the Victorian Football Association spent much of its history operating in this manner – however, by virtue of the council's size, the number of options for unaffiliated leagues and players was sufficiently small to encourage most competitions to adhere to council rules and remain affiliated.
History
19th century Australian rules football was first played in Melbourne, Victoria in 1858, and developed over the following decades. The game was spread to other cities, but due to the large distances between cities in Australia, the game developed independently in each city. Until the 1870s, football in each city or colony was administered in an ad hoc manner by the participating clubs, before colony-level administrative bodies began to be established, with the Victorian Football Association (VFA) and South Australian Football Association (SAFA) formed in 1877 and the Tasmanian Football Association (TFA) in 1879.
The first effort towards higher-level administration of the game took place in 1883, with an informal intercolonial football conference which took place on 9 November in Melbourne. With a growing desire to have a uniform set of rules across the country to facilitate intercolonial play and development of the sport, invitations were sent to all of the major football clubs or leagues. The meeting was attended by delegates representing Victoria, South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania; delegates from New South Wales also travelled to Melbourne but due to communication errors missed the conference; New Zealand was also invited to send a delegate. After debating rule differences which existed at that time between the colonies (including Tasmania's desire to have a crossbar on the goal posts, or South Australia's desire to have behinds count towards the final score of matches), a uniform set of rules was agreed to; the decisions were not binding, but were adhered to due to the collective desire of the delegates. Over the following decade, delegates from the different colonies or regions (Northern and Southern Tasmania, for example, were separately represented) met most Novembers to make adjustments to the playing and administrative rules of the game, coming to agreements based on a vote of attending delegates. Western Australia, where Australian rules football was not prominent until the mid-to-late 1880s, was not involved at this early stage.
In November 1892, the conference recommended the formation of a formal administrative body known as the Australasian Football Council which could make binding decisions. The council was ostensibly formed, and continued to put out rules. However, the legal status of this council came under question in 1894, when, while attempting to resolve a protest by over the eligibility of player Robert Byers, the VFA concluded that the council had not been legally and procedurally established; the VFA ceased to recognise the council, and returned to using the 1890 set of rules. After formal written communication from the VFA in 1895 that it did not recognise the existence of the council, national administration of the game returned to the informal process which had existed since 1883.
Formation of the Australasian Football Council
The desire to re-establish a binding national governing body persisted, and after an agreement was reached at a conference of state delegates in November 1905, the Australasian Football Council was formally established during 1906, with its inaugural meeting taking place at the Port Phillip Hotel in Melbourne on 7 November 1906. The council's initial structure was that each state and New Zealand would have two delegates who would discuss and vote on matters. The decision to appoint two delegates was to allow states which had more than one main league to be represented separately by each, resulting in each being a controlling body for a different region of their state. Several states could have adopted this approach, but only Western Australia did. The delegates were: Victoria: two delegates from Melbourne's Victorian Football League (VFL). The VFA (which was now Melbourne's second-tier body, after the eight clubs which comprised the VFL had seceded from it in 1897) did not receive representation. South Australia: two delegates from Adelaide's SAFA (which was soon renamed the SAFL). Western Australia: one delegate from Perth's West Australian Football Association and one from Kalgoorlie-Boulder's Goldfields Football Association (which were soon renamed the WAFL and GFL respectively). Tasmania: two delegates from Hobart's Tasmanian Football League (previously known as the TFA). Launceston did not receive representation. New South Wales: two delegates from the New South Wales Australian Football League. Broken Hill's Barrier Ranges Football Association did not receive representation. Queensland: two delegates from Brisbane's Queensland Football League. New Zealand: two delegates from the dominion's overall administrative body. The North and South Islands did not receive separate representation.TIMARU HERALD, VOLUME LXXXIX, ISSUE 13129, 10 NOVEMBER 1906, PAGE 5 Leagues not represented by delegates on the council would still come under the council's influence by affiliating under the umbrella of their state controlling body. Notably, the VFA remained unaffiliated, refusing to affiliate with the league which had seceded from it ten years earlier. Victoria's Con Hickey was made the inaugural president of the council. It was initially decided that clubs affiliated with the state controlling bodies would be charged a levy equal to 5% of their income to finance the council's activities, which included the expense of holding meetings, and for propaganda campaigns and developing school football in Queensland, New South Wales and New Zealand, all of which were rugby football territories; the size of levies and funds varied throughout the council's history. Changes to the council's laws or rules required a three-quarters majority to pass.
Early years
Among its first orders of business, the Council arranged for the first Interstate Carnival to be held in Melbourne in 1908. Teams representing each state and New Zealand played several matches over a two-week period in August 1908, with Victoria emerging unbeaten as the champion state. Considered a great success, interstate carnivals were held approximately triennially (except during periods of war) until the 1970s, and were the main on-field events for which the council was directly responsible.
In 1911, the SAFL was threatened with expulsion from the council for arranging matches with the unaffiliated VFA. The VFA and SAFL had an existing five-year arrangement for annual interstate matches when the council was established, and that agreement was allowed to stand but could not be renewed without permission; when the SAFL renewed the agreement in 1911, the council issued an ultimatum that the agreement be cancelled or the SAFL would be expelled from the council, and the SAFL acquiesced.
The tenability of New Zealand's representation on the council quickly came into question. A New Zealand team had attended the 1908 Carnival and was the strongest of the three rugby territories; and while the game had proliferated at the amateur and schoolboys' level with New Zealand having spent all of its propaganda disbursements on its junior game, New Zealand's strength as a senior body with council representation was questioned. A motion to exclude New Zealand from the council was raised and defeated in 1910; funding to New Zealand ceased in 1913, with its funds diverted to New South Wales and Queensland; before finally another motion to expel New Zealand was raised and passed in 1914.