The Essendon Football Club, nicknamed the Bombers, is a professional Australian rules football club which has its training and administration base in the northern Melbourne suburb of Tullamarine, Victoria. The club plays in the Australian Football League (AFL), the game’s premier competition. The club was formed by the McCracken family in their Ascot Vale home ‘Ailsa’, and while the exact date is unknown, it is generally accepted to have been in 1872. The club’s first recorded game took place on 7 June 1873 against a Carlton Second 20. From 1878 until 1896, the club played in the Victorian Football Association then joined seven other clubs in October 1896 to form the breakaway Victorian Football League. Headquartered at the Essendon Recreation Ground, known as Windy Hill, from 1922 to 2013, the club moved to The Hangar in near Tullamarine in late 2013 on land owned the Melbourne Airport. The club currently plays its home games at either Docklands Stadium or the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Dyson Heppell is the current club captain; Ben Rutten is the senior coach.
The North Melbourne Football Club, nicknamed the Kangaroos, are an Australian rules football club that competes in the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's premier competition. Founded in the suburb of North Melbourne in 1869, it is based at its traditional home ground, Arden Street Oval, and plays its home matches at both the nearby Docklands Stadium and Blundstone Arena in Hobart, Tasmania.
Leigh Raymond Matthews is a former Australian rules footballer and coach. He played for Hawthorn in the Victorian Football League (VFL) and coached Collingwood and the Brisbane Lions.
Mark "Bomber" Thompson is a retired Australian rules footballer and former senior coach. He played 202 games for the Essendon Football Club from 1983 to 1996, captaining the side from 1992 until 1995.
Robert Shaw is a former Australian rules footballer with the Essendon Football Club and coach in the VFL/AFL with the Fitzroy and Adelaide Football Clubs. Shaw was recruited from Sandy Bay Football Club in Tasmania.
Gary James Ayres is a former Australian rules footballer who played for the Hawthorn Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). He is currently the senior coach for the Port Melbourne Football Club in the Victorian Football League (VFL). Ayres' playing career is honored by the existence of the Gary Ayres Award, an annual award given to the player judged best-afield by the AFL Coaches Association throughout each AFL finals series.
Matthew Egan is a former Australian rules footballer who played for the Geelong Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). He served as interim senior coach at the Essendon Football Club after the resignation of James Hird for the final three rounds of the 2015 season. He served as head of development at the Melbourne Football Club from September 2016 until 2020.
Neil Passmore Craig is a former Australian rules footballer who played for the Norwood Football Club, Sturt Football Club and the North Adelaide Football Club in the South Australian National Football League (SANFL).
Matthew Knights is an Australian rules football coach and former player who is currently serving as an assistant coach with the Geelong Football Club. Knights played in the midfield for the Richmond Football Club from 1988 to 2002, before going on to forge a coaching career, most notably as head coach of the Essendon Football Club from 2008 to 2010 where he became the head coach of the Geelong VFL Football Club from 2012–14, guiding the Cats to the 2012 VFL Premiership and the 2013 VFL Grand Final.
Ken Hinkley is the senior coach of the Port Adelaide Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL) and a former player with the Geelong Football Club and Fitzroy Football Club.
The 1995 AFL season was the 99th season of the Australian Football League (AFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Australia, which was known as the Victorian Football League until 1989.
Thomas Joseph Cullinan Fitzmaurice was an Australian rules footballer in the (then) Victorian Football League (VFL).
Charles Henry Pannam was an Australian rules footballer who played for the Collingwood Football Club in the Victorian Football Association (VFA) between 1894 and 1896 then in the Victorian Football League (VFL) between 1897 and 1906. He then played for the Richmond Football Club in the VFA in 1907 then in the VFL in 1908. He was senior coach of Richmond in 1907 and 1912.
The 1923 VFL season was the 27th season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured nine clubs, ran from 5 May until 20 October, and comprised a 16-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top four clubs.
The 1948 VFL season was the 52nd season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs, ran from 17 April until 9 October, and comprised a 19-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top four clubs.
Joe McShane was an Australian rules footballer in the Victorian Football League (VFL).
The 1985 VFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the Essendon Football Club and Hawthorn Football Club, held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne on 28 September 1985. It was the 89th annual grand final of the Victorian Football League, staged to determine the premiers for the 1985 VFL season. The match, attended by 100,042 spectators, was won by Essendon by a margin of 78 points, marking that club's 14th premiership victory.
The AFL Australian Football League is the top professional Australian rules football league in the world. The league consists of eighteen teams: nine based in the city of Melbourne, one from regional Victoria, and eight based in other Australian states. The reason for this unbalanced geographic distribution lies in the history of the league, which was based solely within Victoria from the time it was established in 1897, until the time the league expanded through the addition of clubs from interstate to the existing teams starting in the 1980s; until this expansion, the league was known as the VFL (Victorian Football League).
Edward Llewellyn was an Australian rules footballer who played with Geelong and North Melbourne in the Victorian Football League (VFL).
The history of the Geelong Football Club, began in 1859 in the city of Geelong, Australia, is significant as the club is the second oldest AFL club, is believed to be the fourth oldest football club in Australia and one of the oldest in the world and one of the most successful. Initially playing under its own rules, some of which, notably, were permanently introduced into Australian Football. It adopted the Laws of Australian Football in the early 1860s after a series of compromises with the Melbourne Football Club.
