South Australian National Football League
The South Australian National Football League (SANFL) is an Australian rules football league based in the Australian state of South Australia. It is also the governing body for the sport of Australian rules football in South Australia.
Originally formed as the South Australian Football Association on 30 April 1877, the SANFL is the oldest surviving football league of any code in Australia and one of the oldest football competitions in the world, forming just a few years after the United Hospitals Challenge Cup (1874), the oldest rugby football competition, and over a decade before The Football League (soccer).
Consisting of a single division competition, the season is a 23 week "home-and-away" (regular) season from April to September. The top five teams play off in a final series culminating in the grand final for the Thomas Seymour Hill Premiership Trophy. The grand final is held at Football Park in October, generally the week after the AFL Grand Final.
The league also owns the sub-licences for South Australia's two AFL clubs - Adelaide Football Club and Port Adelaide Football Club. It is also responsible for the management of all levels of football in the state. This includes junior football, country football, amateur football and specific programs rolled out across schools, indigenous communities (including the APY Lands in the state's north) and newly-arrived migrant communities.
The SANFL owns the 51,240 seat Football Park, the largest stadium in South Australia. While the stadium is primarily used for Australian Football League matches, it is also used for SANFL games. The SANFL is the second highest attended Australian rules football league behind the AFL.
Read more about South Australian National Football League: Current Clubs, Former Clubs, Jumpers, League Administration, SANFL Ladder, Audience, Interteam Wins
Famous quotes containing the words south, australian, national, football and/or league:
“History in the making is a very uncertain thing. It might be better to wait till the South American republic has got through with its twenty-fifth revolution before reading much about it. When it is over, some one whose business it is, will be sure to give you in a digested form all that it concerns you to know, and save you trouble, confusion, and time. If you will follow this plan, you will be surprised to find how new and fresh your interest in what you read will become.”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)
“Each Australian is a Ulysses.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)
“...America has enjoyed the doubtful blessing of a single-track mind. We are able to accommodate, at a time, only one national hero; and we demand that that hero shall be uniform and invincible. As a literate people we are preoccupied, neither with the race nor the individual, but with the type. Yesterday, we romanticized the “tough guy;” today, we are romanticizing the underprivileged, tough or tender; tomorrow, we shall begin to romanticize the pure primitive.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)
“In football they measure forty-yard sprints. Nobody runs forty yards in basketball. Maybe you run the ninety-four feet of the court; then you stop, not on a dime, but on Miss Liberty’s torch. In football you run over somebody’s face.”
—Donald Hall (b. 1928)
“Stereotypes fall in the face of humanity. You toodle along, thinking that all gay men wear leather after dark and should never, ever be permitted around a Little League field. And then one day your best friend from college, the one your kids adore, comes out to you.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)