The AFL Grand Final is on this weekend! Australian Rules Football was first codified in 1859, making it older than soccer. AFL is the most popular spectator sport in Australia and the Grand Final is Australia's version of the Superb Owl.

tldr: There's some videos at the bottom.

First things first: How do I watch this thing?

It's on at 12:30am EST Saturday Sep 30 (i.e. late Friday night).

United States: Fox Soccer Plus
Canada: TSN2
UK: lol no, it starts at 5:30am local

Explain the rules to me real quick?



The aim is to kick the ball, untouched, through the big posts; that's a goal, worth six points. If it's touched, hits the post, or goes between a big post and a small one, that's a behind (also commonly called point or minor score), worth one point.

Play is continuous. The ball is advanced by a team by running up the field carrying it (in which case the ball must be bounced on the ground at least every 15 metres), or via kicks or handballs/handpasses, which involve holding the ball in one hand and punching it with the other fist. Throwing is a foul. A kick which travels 15+ metres, caught untouched and on the full is a mark and earns a free kick. The rules on what constitutes a catch are very lenient compared to the NFL, basically if it looks even slightly like a catch, it will be paid. Marking contests work more or less like competing for a pass in the NFL, with the exception that you are allowed to jump up onto your opponent to get height - I know that sounds crazy, go to 2:20 in the first video at the end to see what I'm talking about.

The sport is full-contact, but only a ball carrier may be tackled; limited blocking (called shepherding) is legal within a few metres of the ball. Fouls result in free kicks. There are various contact fouls, including push in the back, over the shoulder, head high tackle, tripping, holding. One other foul it's important to know is holding the ball; a player who gets tackled must legally dispose of the ball (via handpass or kick) before being tackled to the ground, BUT they must have had a clear opportunity to do so, so for instance the foul does not apply if a tackle immediately pins their arms to their chest. That means the foul is rarely called, roughly 5 times a game maybe. It's a bit like intentional grounding in how a number of things have to be just right, but the existence of the foul influences how people play. Usually when holding the ball is called it's that a player has attempted to evade a tackle and failed.

If there's a deadlock in play and nobody has committed a foul, a referee will bounce the ball in the air to restart play, like a tip-off in basketball.

Can you explain how the Deliberate Out Of Bounds rule works?

No. Can you? If so, please explain it to the officials prior to the game.

Wasn't there a replay a few years back when the Grand Final ended in a tie?

Yes, but that rule no longer exists. All ties in finals used to result in replays, but that would mess up the schedule, so a long time ago that was abandoned for most finals, but the Grand Final remained that way for tradition. After there was a replay in 2010, there were widespread calls to scrap the replay and in 2016 the AFL announced that ties will now go to extra time.

Who are these teams?



The Adelaide Crows are from my home city, they were a new club created for the AFL in 1991 as part of national expansion. They have two premierships, in 1997 and 1998, and finished top of the table this season. Of the 18 clubs in the league, they have the 4th-highest crowds. The Crows tend to be the Adelaide club of the, um, do you have the expression "chardonnay set" in the US? "Arugula eaters" maybe? You know what I mean. The working class club in Adelaide is Port Adelaide Power. Adelaide is a bit of a looked-down-on city historically, it's a little bit like Austin, the two are sister cities.



The Richmond Tigers are the team I support. They're from Melbourne and were founded in 1885. They have a large and enthusiastic fan base, their average attendance ranked #1 during 2017, partly because they finally don't suck this season. The large fan base has not translated to on field success recently. Their last premiership was in 1980 and they have been perennial underachievers for as long as I can remember.

Neither club are particularly disliked by neutrals.

Any FREE MONEY tips?

I'm in a group of sharp sports betters and we like Richmond, but it's just a lean. The sides met earlier this season in Adelaide and Adelaide hammered Richmond 140-64, but Adelaide are very strong at home and the Tigers have been improving towards the end of the season. In theory this game is at a neutral venue because the Grand Final is always played at the 100,000-capacity MCG, but in practice, the MCG is actually Richmond's home ground and they will have huge home advantage. This sport also has a tendency to throw up random results between two good teams, anything can happen on the day.

Style-wise, Adelaide is a very offense-based team while Richmond are a bit more balanced. Adelaide have a strong team across the board while Richmond tend to rely more on star players.

Players to watch?

Richmond #4, Dustin Martin



Dusty is a forward and won league MVP this season. He's just an all around monster at the game, great skills, great physicality and toughness, and excellent game intelligence despite being dumb as rocks in real life. His distinctive haircut and tattoos make him recognizable from a distance even for first time viewers.

Richmond #18, Alex Rance



Rance is arguably the best fullback of all time. He's a bit like Revis Island in its prime. A common complaint you hear from other fans watching their team play Richmond is "Jesus Christ, stop kicking it near Rance!".

Adelaide #18, Eddie Betts



Eddie is a small forward who makes up for his size with great skills and agility, like a Sproles or Petersen type player. He's known for successfully taking snap shots for goal from ridiculously tight spots. He's also a very likeable, humble guy and the most popular player on the Crows team. Eddie is one of many Aboriginal players in the AFL.

Adelaide #9, Rory Sloane



Sloane is a midfielder and probably Adelaide's most important player. Other teams tend to heavily tag him these days as part of a strategy to shut the Crows down. Whether Sloane is having a bad day is a reasonable proxy for how the Crows are doing overall.

Can I make hilarious jokes ITT about the prevalence of venomous creatures in Australia?

Obviously, those NEVER get old.

Bro, where are the cheerleaders?

We don't have them. And you don't want photos of typical female AFL supporters.

tl;dr

Here's an official AFL video with a basic rules explanation aimed at Americans. You'll be able to spot a couple of the players mentioned above in it.



And a highlights compilation, to get a sense of what is good about the game:

Prediction: Richmond by 10 points, tight game.

Backup Prediction: Adelaide by 25 goals.

I feel that picking Richmond to disappoint their fans is never a bad bet.

That's a very solid argument.

. Sharing a hotel room with an Aussie this weekend and will probably be up around then so may well end up watching this.

Are kangaroos allowed to play, and if so, what position do they specialize in?

a few years ago i watched a bit and really enjoyed it. my schedule at the time was being up all night though so it's been harder since I've fixed that. How did Melbourne do this year? They were the team I watched.

I've watched Australian football for a while now and have only one question; There are rules?

They don't want to play, they like MMA.



You dodged a bullet there. They just missed out on a playoffs berth in very painful fashion. Optimistic people would see that as progress at least, since Melbourne have been dreadful for a decade now. They did manage to soundly beat the Crows in Adelaide, which is something not many teams can claim this season.

There are definitely rules, everyone agrees on that. The debate is whether anybody knows what they are.

Fun Melbourne fact: The Melbourne Demons are the oldest continuously existing professional football club in the world, in any code of football. Founded 1858.

The one week of the year they drag Mike Brady's corpse out of the freezer to perform Up There Cazaly

Don't really give a **** who wins, just hope we get a decent game and some nice weather.

yeah, the reason ChrisV didn't post any highlights from the rest of the playoffs (they call them 'finals series' over there) is that 7 of the 8 games have been blowouts.

Some of them were good games anyway. Richmond GWS was a whole lot of fun as a Tigers fan.

A blowout happens because one team punches the other really hard when they're not expecting it then just keeps playing, right?

Finding it hard to imagine a circumstance where a team is not expecting to be punched.

Well the obvious one would be...

Trivia: This is the first Grand Final where none of the players on either team have played in a Grand Final before since the very first one back in the 1800s.

another fun factoid for the foreigners:
one thing that's pretty unfair is that the grand final is always played at the mcg, which happens to be richmond's home ground. this happens because the mcg is 'the home of football', and holds 100k people, so it's a natural choice in a way. obviously adelaide plays their home games in adelaide which is another state

this is even more lol because afl ground sizes are not standardised, the mcg is the largest ground afl, and is about 10% wider and ~5% shorter than adelaide's home ground (for reference, the mcg is 4x the area of an NFL field). variations in ground size is made out to be a bigger deal than it is sometimes, but it's a relevant factor and teams tend to play in a way that suits their home ground. also, richmond will undoubtedly be the beneficiary of much more crowd support


because of this, despite richmond being an objectively worse team by most measures, the odds aren't too skewed being 60:40 in adelaide's favour

Yeah, the line has been set as though this were a Richmond home game, even though Adelaide are notionally the home team, because it actually will be a Richmond home game.

Because Melbourne is the birthplace of the AFL and is a sports-crazy city, 9 of the 18 AFL teams are from Melbourne, plus another one from nearby Geelong. This prevents the usual phenomenon in sports where teams from the same city are the fiercest rivals. Aside from fans of Carlton (Richmond's chief rival) I'm guessing any other fans of Melbourne-based teams at the Grand Final will be rooting for Richmond.

Good first term, competitive, fluid game, bit of punching on at the end. Classic stuff.

Who am I cheering for

Lol punt road. I'm cheering for yellow.

I mean non yellow

Where is the foul??!