The West Australian Football League is an Australian rules football league based in Perth, in Western Australia. The league currently consists of ten teams, which play each other in a 20-round season usually lasting from April to September, with the top five teams playing off in a finals series, culminating in a Grand Final. The league also runs reserves, colts (under-19) and women's competitions.
The Claremont Football Club, nicknamed Tigers, is an Australian rules football club based in Claremont, Western Australia, that currently plays in the West Australian Football League (WAFL) and WAFL Women's (WAFLW). Its official colours are navy blue and gold. Formed as the "Cottesloe Beach Football Club" in 1906, the club entering the WAFL in 1925 as the "Claremont-Cottesloe Football Club"', changing its name to the present in 1935. Claremont have won 12 senior men's premierships since entering the competition, including most recently the 2011 and 2012 premierships.
The East Fremantle Football Club, nicknamed the Sharks and colloquially referred to as East Freo, is an Australian rules football club playing in the West Australian Football League (WAFL) and WAFL Women's (WAFLW). The team's home ground is East Fremantle Oval. East Fremantle is the most successful club in WAFL history, winning 30 premierships since their entry into the competition in 1898. East Fremantle's last premiership was in 2023, when they defeated Peel Thunder.
The East Perth Football Club, nicknamed the Royals, is an Australian rules football club based in Leederville, Western Australia, current playing in the West Australian Football League (WAFL) and WAFL Women's (WAFLW). Formed in 1902 as the Union Football Club, the club entered the WAFL in 1906, changing its name to East Perth. It won its first premiership in 1919, part of a streak of five consecutive premierships. Overall, the club has won 17 premierships, most recently in 2002. The club is currently based at Leederville Oval, which it shares with the Subiaco Football Club, having previously played home games at Wellington Square and Perth Oval from 1910 to 1999.
The Swan Districts Football Club, nicknamed the Swans, is an Australian rules football club playing in the West Australian Football League (WAFL) and WAFL Women's (WAFLW). The club is based at Bassendean Oval, in Bassendean, an eastern suburb of Perth, Western Australia. The club was formed in 1933, and joined the then-Western Australian National Football League (WANFL) in 1934, acting as a successor to the Midland Junction Football Club, which had disbanded during World War I, in the Perth Hills region.
The Subiaco Football Club, nicknamed the Lions and known before 1973 as the Maroons, is an Australian rules football club in the West Australian Football League (WAFL) and WAFL Women's (WAFLW). It was founded in 1896, and admitted to the WAFL in 1901, along with North Fremantle. The club is currently based at Leederville Oval, having previously played at Subiaco Oval.
South Fremantle Football Club is an Australian rules football club based in Fremantle, Western Australia. The club plays in the Western Australian Football League (WAFL) and the WAFL Women's (WAFLW), commonly going by the nickname the Bulldogs. Since its founding, the club has won 14 WAFL premierships, the most recent of them in 2020.
The West Perth Football Club, nicknamed the Falcons, is an Australian rules football club located in Joondalup, Western Australia. West Perth competes in the West Australian Football League (WAFL) and WAFL Women's (WAFLW) and is the oldest existing Australian rules football club in Western Australia. Originally located at Leederville Oval, the team was relocated in 1994 to Arena Joondalup, a sports complex in the northern suburbs of Perth. The team's club song is "It's a Grand Old Flag" and its traditional rivals are East Perth.
George Ronald Doig was an Australian rules footballer who played for and later coached the East Fremantle Football Club in the Western Australian National Football League (WANFL). A member of the Doig sporting family, Doig kicked 1095 goals from his 202 games playing almost exclusively as a forward, becoming East Fremantle's leading goalkicker of all-time, and leading the WANFL's goalkicking on six occasions. He kicked more than 100 goals in a season nine times, which included a haul of 152 goals in 1934 that set an elite record which was not broken until Bernie Naylor kicked 167 goals in 1953. Doig captained the club for two seasons, from 1940 to 1941, also filling the role of coach during the first season.
The Fremantle Football Hall of Legends was inaugurated by the Fremantle Football Club in 1995, in recognition of the new Australian Football League team's links with its home city's football heritage. The inductees are nominated by the two clubs from the Fremantle area in the West Australian Football League: East Fremantle and South Fremantle. In time, players who represented Fremantle in the AFL will join their predecessors in this prestigious Hall.
Bernard George Andrew Naylor was an Australian rules footballer who was one of the most successful full-forwards in the history of the West Australian Football League. The WAFL now awards the leading goalscorer each year the Bernie Naylor Medal.
The 1934 WANFL season was the 50th season of the various incarnations of the Western Australian National Football League. Following upon numerous unsuccessful attempts to revive Midland Junction during the 1920s, Bassendean-based Swan Districts were admitted to the competition. The black and whites were more competitive than previous new clubs owing to the presence of a number of players with previous WANFL experience, including Fred Sweetapple from West Perth, captain-coach "Judda" Bee from East Fremantle and Nigel Gorn from South Fremantle, but after five promising campaigns were to endure nineteen open-age seasons without once winning as many matches as they lost.
The 1997 Westar Rules Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the South Fremantle Football Club and the East Fremantle Football Club, on 21 September 1997 at Subiaco Oval, to determine the premier team of the Westar Rules for the 1997 season. South Fremantle won the game by 6 points, 13.7 (85) to 11.13 (79), with David Hynes of South Fremantle winning the Simpson Medal as best on ground.
The 1937 WANFL season was the 53rd season of the Western Australian National Football League. The season saw numerous notable highlights, including:
- Five players[a] kicked 100 goals, a number equalled in the major leagues of VFL/AFL, VFA/VFL, or SANFL, only in the 1939 VFA season.[b]
- Frank "Scranno" Jenkins won the Sandover Medal in his debut season of senior football with a record high under the 3-2-1 voting system of 34 votes.
- In the second round, East Fremantle broke their own 21-year-old record for the highest score in league history.
- East Perth drew three games in one season, a feat equalled in major Australian Rules Leagues only by VFA club Moorabbin in 1958 and West Perth in 1960. The Royals could easily have drawn a fourth game but for crowd acclamation preventing umpires from hearing the bell against Subiaco on Foundation Day. No senior Australian Rules team at any level is known to have tied four matches in a season, but Geelong’s Under-19s did so in 1971.
- Swan Districts, with Ted Holdsworth kicking at least six goals in each of the first ten games, reached their first finals series in only their fourth WANFL season. Holdsworth was to reach his 100 goals in two fewer games than George Doig took in his 152-goal 1934 season, but concussion and a broken hand eliminated the prospect of a new record.
The 1973 WANFL season was the 89th season of the Western Australian National Football League. It is most famous for Subiaco breaking the longest premiership drought in the history of the competition, winning for the first time since 1924 after having been a chopping block for most of the middle third of the century. Under the coaching of former St Kilda champion Ross Smith, the Lions, as they became christened in July, bounced back from two disappointing seasons to lose only two of their final sixteen home-and-away games for their first minor premiership since 1935, then in a low-scoring Grand Final comfortably defeated a much more hardened West Perth team.
The 1938 WANFL season was the 54th season of the Western Australian National Football League, and saw Claremont, under champion coach Johnny Leonard who had transferred from West Perth, win its first premiership after losing two Grand Finals and drawing the first one this season. The blue and golds were to win the following two premierships before a long period near the foot of the ladder after Claremont Oval was gutted by a fire in 1944.
The 1971 WANFL season was the 87th season of the various incarnations of the Western Australian National Football League, and the forty-first under that moniker.
The 1940 WANFL season was the 56th season of the various incarnations of the Western Australian National Football League. It saw Claremont win its third consecutive premiership, but its last before returning to the status of cellar-dweller it occupied during its first decade in the WA(N)FL – between 1943 and 1978 Claremont played finals only five times for one premiership. South Fremantle, after a lean period in the middle 1930s, displaced perennial power clubs East Fremantle and East Perth as the Tigers’ Grand Final opponent, and established some of the basis, in spite of three disastrous wartime under-age seasons, for the club's fabled dynasty after the war.
The 2014 WAFL season was the 130th season of the various incarnations of the West Australian Football League (WAFL). The season began on 22 March 2014 and concluded on 21 September 2014 with the 2014 WAFL Grand Final. West Perth entered the season as reigning premiers after defeating East Perth by 49 points in the 2013 WAFL Grand Final at Patersons Stadium.
The 2022 WAFL season is the 138th season of the various incarnations of the West Australian Football League (WAFL).The season commenced on the 15th of April, and concluded with the Grand Final on the 1st of October, with West Perth defeating Claremont at Leederville Oval by 12 points. Fixtures were released in stages, to allow for COVID flexibility. The first stage saw the first nine rounds of the season be released, rounds 10-14 were released before the start of Round 7, and the final rounds (14-20) were released on July 8, before the start of Round 12. All the teams from the previous season have been retained, as there was speculation if the West Coast Eagles reserves would return.
