The AFL's Great Rivalries and Where They Came From

AFL rivalries are not a marketing category. Each one is the residue of a specific argument — about a district boundary, a licence, a grand final that one side has not forgiven, or a president who said something he could not take back. The strongest of them predate the national competition by a century; the newest were manufactured by expansion and have taken thirty years to acquire weight. This page takes the ones that matter and explains the cause of each.

The direct answer, if that is what you came for: Carlton against Collingwood is the biggest AFL rivalry by every measure that can be counted — about 270 meetings, six grand finals, and the largest crowd ever assembled for an Australian football match. The most bitter is the Showdown in Adelaide, because both clubs can point to a specific injustice committed by the other's supporters at the moment the licences were handed out. The most physically hostile is the Western Derby in Perth. And the most emotionally loaded single fixture, Collingwood against Essendon on 25 April, has a page of its own.

Everything below assumes you know roughly who the clubs are. If you do not, the guide to the Victorian clubs and the guide to the clubs outside Victoria set out all eighteen between them.

What actually makes an AFL rivalry

Three ingredients, and a rivalry generally needs at least two of them.

The first is proximity. In Melbourne the clubs were founded as district sides, which meant a neighbouring club was competing for the same twelve-year-olds who would be senior players in a decade. That gave the Victorian derbies an economic basis rather than a purely sporting one, and it is why Carlton against Collingwood or Richmond against Collingwood carry more weight than the distance between the grounds would suggest.

The second is repeated high-stakes meetings. A rivalry that never produces a September match stays a fixture. Carlton and Collingwood met in six grand finals; Hawthorn and Geelong met in three; Sydney and GWS have met four times in finals. Those matches, not the ordinary rounds, are what supporters actually argue about.

The third is a grievance with a date attached. The Showdown has the 1990 licensing dispute. Hawthorn and Geelong have Jeff Kennett's remarks after the 2008 grand final. Carlton and Collingwood have the 1910 grand final brawl. A rivalry with a documented insult at its centre outlasts one built only on results, because results eventually even out and the insult never does.

Carlton v Collingwood: the oldest and the biggest

The two clubs have met roughly 270 times in VFL and AFL competition. Collingwood lead the series by about 137 wins to 129 with four draws, which is as close as a series of that length can plausibly be.

They were both strong early. Collingwood entered the Victorian Football League as a foundation club and won premierships immediately; Carlton did the same. Their districts are separated by a short tram ride through inner Melbourne, so the competition for players, supporters and gate receipts was direct from the beginning. Neither club has ever had a period long enough at the bottom of the ladder to let the other forget about it.

The turning point in the relationship is generally placed at the 1910 grand final, which Collingwood won and which produced a brawl said to have involved something like thirty players. Before that the two clubs were competitive but not hostile. Afterwards they were hostile, and they have stayed that way through five changes of ground, two world wars and the transition to a national competition.

• 270Meetings
• 137Collingwood wins
• 129Carlton wins
• 6Grand finals

Career totals across VFL and AFL competition including finals, as published in club and competition records. These are approximate because clubs differ on whether to include night series and pre-season matches, and they change every season the two sides meet.

The 1970 grand final and a crowd record that will not be broken

Carlton trailed Collingwood by 44 points at half time in the 1970 grand final and won by ten points, 17.9 (111) to 14.17 (101). The official crowd was 121,696, which remains the largest attendance at any Australian football match and will not be exceeded, because the Melbourne Cricket Ground is now an all-seated stadium with a capacity around 100,000.

Two things came out of that afternoon. The first is Alex Jesaulenko's mark, taken over Graeme Jenkin, which became the inaugural Mark of the Year and is the single most reproduced image in the sport. The second is a durable Collingwood grievance, since the club led one of the biggest grand finals ever played and lost it.

The match is also a useful reminder of how the game has changed. A crowd of 121,696 stood on terraces that no longer exist, watched a match with no interchange rotations as they are now understood, and saw a centre bounce after every goal — a restart the AFL abolished before the 2026 season in favour of an umpire throw-up.

1979, 1981 and the grand final ledger

Carlton beat Collingwood again in the 1979 grand final by five points, in a match remembered for a goal credited to Wayne Harmes after he knocked the ball back into play from what looked to most Collingwood supporters like beyond the boundary line. Ken Sheldon goaled from it. There was no score review technology, the goal stood, and Collingwood have never accepted it.

Carlton president George Harris is reported to have said afterwards that beating Collingwood by five points was better than beating them by ten goals. Whether or not the wording is exact, the sentiment is a fair summary of what the fixture does to people.

Carlton won again in 1981. The grand final ledger between the two now reads five to one in Carlton's favour, with Collingwood's only win coming in 1910. That imbalance is why Collingwood supporters lead the series overall and still feel they are behind.

Collingwood v Essendon: the fixture that owns a public holiday

The Anzac Day match has been played between these two clubs at the MCG almost every year since 1995, and it has grown into the largest home-and-away fixture in Australian sport. Collingwood lead the Anzac Day series by roughly 19 wins to 10 with two draws.

The rivalry that underpins it is genuine but was not, before 1995, in the top rank. It is the fixture that made it enormous, not the other way around — which is unusual, and is one reason other clubs argue the day should be shared. The full history of the match, the medal, the ceremony and the argument about whether two clubs should own a national day of commemoration is set out in the Anzac Day clash guide.

Carlton v Essendon: Sheedy, 1993 and 1999

Carlton and Essendon have met about 253 times, with Carlton leading roughly 129 to 119 with six draws. Both are among the most successful clubs in the competition's history, which gives the fixture a permanent edge regardless of current form.

The modern phase of it begins with Kevin Sheedy's appointment as Essendon coach in 1981. Sheedy was a former Richmond player with a talent for provoking opposition supporters, and he treated Carlton as the club to be measured against. Essendon's win over Carlton in the 1993 grand final sharpened it further, and the 1999 preliminary final between them — a match Carlton won as heavy underdogs — is still the fixture's best single game.

Hawthorn v Geelong: the Kennett curse

This is the best modern Victorian rivalry and it was created almost entirely in the space of five years.

Hawthorn beat a heavily favoured Geelong in the 2008 grand final. Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett then made comments understood to mean that Geelong lacked his club's mental strength. Geelong won the next eleven meetings, from 2009 to 2013, nine of them by ten points or fewer and at an average margin of about 8.7 points. During the run Geelong won premierships in 2009 and 2011.

Hawthorn ended it in the 2013 preliminary final, trailing by 20 points at three-quarter time and winning. They went on to win that premiership and the two after it. The whole thing lasted five years and produced a rivalry that had barely existed before 2008.

100%

• Geelong wins11
• Hawthorn wins0

Counts the run of meetings between Hawthorn's 2008 grand final win and Hawthorn's win in the 2013 preliminary final, the period known as the Kennett curse. Nine of the eleven Geelong wins were by ten points or fewer.

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Hawthorn and Geelong, 2009 to 2013

Item	Value
Geelong wins	11
Hawthorn wins	0

The rivalries at a glance

Rivalry	Since	Meetings	Series lead
Carlton v Collingwood	1890s	About 270	Collingwood, roughly 137 to 129 with 4 draws
Carlton v Essendon	1890s	About 253	Carlton, roughly 129 to 119 with 6 draws
Collingwood v Essendon on Anzac Day	1995	31	Collingwood, 19 to 10 with 2 draws
Western Derby	1995	63 by 2026	West Coast, 33 to 30
Showdown	1997	About 60	Close throughout, check the current figure
QClash	2011	31	Brisbane, 23 to 8
Sydney Derby	2012	32	Sydney, 21 to 11

The Showdown row is an estimate based on two matches a season since 1997 and should be checked against the clubs' records before it is quoted. Every other row comes from published head-to-head records and moves whenever the two sides next meet.

The Showdown: Adelaide v Port Adelaide

The first Showdown was played on 20 April 1997 at Football Park, with Port Adelaide winning 83 to 72 before 47,256 people. It is now played at Adelaide Oval twice a season, and the best player on the ground receives the Showdown Medal.

Malcolm Blight, who coached Adelaide to premierships in 1997 and 1998 and who had spent a career in South Australian and Victorian football, said in 2009 that there was no doubt it was the greatest rivalry in football. Coming from someone with no particular reason to flatter either club, that is worth something.

Why the Showdown is uniquely bitter

Most derbies are about geography. This one is about how the two clubs came to exist.

Port Adelaide was the dominant SANFL club and approached the AFL directly about a licence at the end of the 1980s. When those negotiations became public in 1990 the other SANFL clubs treated it as a betrayal of the state competition. The SANFL obtained an injunction blocking Port Adelaide's bid and instead assembled a composite South Australian side — the Adelaide Crows — which entered the AFL in 1991.

Port Adelaide was eventually granted a licence in 1994 and entered in 1997, which meant six seasons of watching a club that existed only because its own bid had been stopped. Port supporters regard the Crows as a construct; Crows supporters regard Port as the club that tried to abandon South Australian football. Add a hundred years of SANFL history, a socio-economic contrast between the Port district and the wealthier eastern suburbs, and repeated arguments about which club may wear which state colours, and you have a fixture with more grievance per match than anything else in the competition.

The Western Derby: West Coast v Fremantle

The first Western Derby was played on 14 May 1995, four years after West Coast had begun as Western Australia's single AFL club and in Fremantle's debut season. There had been 63 AFL derbies by 2026, with West Coast leading 33 to 30 — a much closer ledger than the last decade would suggest, because Fremantle have dominated the recent run.

The match was played at Subiaco Oval from 1995 to 2017 and has been at Optus Stadium since 2018, which increased capacity substantially and made the derby one of the largest regular crowds outside Melbourne. West Coast's largest winning margin is 117 points, set on 15 April 2000. The best player receives the Glendinning-Allan Medal.

The women's derby has gone the other way entirely: Fremantle won the first eight against West Coast from 2020, a run with no equivalent in the men's fixture.

The QClash and the Sydney Derby

Both are expansion derbies and both took about a decade to matter.

The QClash between Brisbane and Gold Coast has been played since 2011, usually twice a season. Gold Coast won the first one in the club's debut season, which is still the fixture's most quoted result. Brisbane have won the great majority since, leading roughly 23 to 8 from 31 meetings, and the match only acquired real weight once Brisbane became a genuine premiership side and Gold Coast finally became competitive.

The Sydney Derby between the Swans and GWS began in 2012. Kevin Sheedy, then the inaugural GWS coach, named it the Battle of the Bridge, a piece of branding that never entirely stuck. Sydney lead by roughly 21 to 11 as of 2026, but the finals record runs the other way — the two have met four times in September and GWS have won three of them, which is exactly the sort of imbalance that keeps a young rivalry alive.

• Leading club
• Trailing club

Western Derby3330

QClash238

Sydney Derby2111

Wins by each club in the men's AFL fixture as published in 2026 records. The Western Derby total is 63 matches, the QClash 31 and the Sydney Derby 32. Finals are included. These figures change whenever the sides next meet.

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Interstate derby head-to-head

Item	Leading club	Trailing club
Western Derby	33	30
QClash	23	8
Sydney Derby	21	11

Why interstate rivalries formed faster than Victorian ones

A Melbourne rivalry took fifty years to become hostile. An interstate one took about five, for three reasons.

There are only two clubs in each of Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane, so there is no third option. A Melburnian can dislike Collingwood and also dislike Carlton; a Western Australian effectively picks one of two and inherits the other as an enemy.

The fixture guarantees the meetings. Two derbies a season, both in prime broadcast slots, both sold out, is a much faster accumulation of shared memory than the Victorian clubs ever had.

And the clubs arrived with existing grievances imported from the state leagues. Port Adelaide brought a century of SANFL identity into the AFL. Fremantle was created partly because Perth's southern suburbs did not accept West Coast as their club. Those arguments were not new in 1995 or 1997; they were transferred.

Rivalries the fixture creates

Some AFL rivalries exist because the league decided they should. Anzac Day is the clearest case: the Collingwood-Essendon relationship was ordinary before 1995 and is now the biggest single fixture on the calendar, because the AFL and the two clubs built a tradition around it.

Gather Round in South Australia, the Anzac Round, King's Birthday and the Good Friday fixture all work the same way. The league picks a pairing, protects it, sells it for a decade and the rivalry becomes real regardless of where it started. That is not cynicism — it is how most traditions in professional sport are actually made — but it is worth knowing which rivalries grew and which were planted.

What the 2026 changes do to rivalry matches

Three changes are worth knowing before you watch a derby this season.

The centre bounce has been abolished. Every restart at the start of a quarter and after a goal is now an umpire throw-up, and competing rucks may not cross the centre line before they engage. In a derby this matters, because the ruck contest was one of the standard places for the first physical statement of the day.

The medical substitute has been removed. Clubs name twenty-three players with five on the interchange bench, which changes how a coach manages an injury in a match that neither side wants to lose.

The finals are now a top ten with a wildcard round, seventh against tenth and eighth against ninth. Practically, that means more late-season derbies with September consequences attached, because more clubs are still alive in the final rounds.

Rivalry in the AFLW

The women's competition inherited the club names and therefore inherited the rivalries, but not the head-to-head history. Some have diverged sharply: Fremantle's early dominance of the women's Western Derby has no parallel in the men's record, and the Adelaide women's side established itself as a power in a way that reversed the usual South Australian order.

That divergence is interesting rather than trivial. It shows how much of a rivalry is inherited identity and how much is current results, because AFLW supporters carry the first while experiencing the opposite of the second.

Medals, cups and what is actually at stake

Most of the big fixtures have a trophy or a medal attached, which is a relatively recent habit.

The Showdown Medal goes to the best player in each Showdown. The Glendinning-Allan Medal does the same in the Western Derby. The Anzac Medal, struck in 2000 and awarded retrospectively for the earlier matches, goes to the player who best exemplifies the qualities associated with the day. Carlton and Collingwood play for the Peter Mac Cup at Collingwood home games and the Richard Pratt Cup at Carlton home games, both raising money and awareness for cancer research and both dating from 1993.

None of these change premiership points. They exist to give a home-and-away match a piece of silverware and a name to remember it by, and they work.

What to expect in the crowd

Australian football crowds are not segregated. Supporters of both clubs sit throughout the ground, which produces continuous argument in the outer and very little organised trouble. A derby is louder than an ordinary match and the queues are longer, but the experience is closer to a large family gathering with a disagreement running through it than to a European away end.

Practical notes. Derbies sell out, so buy through a club membership or the ticketing agency rather than at the gate. Arrive earlier than you would for a normal match, because the pre-match build-up is part of the point. If you are attending at Marvel Stadium rather than the MCG, the roof means weather is irrelevant and the acoustics are considerably harsher.

Richmond, Collingwood and the second rank of Victorian grudges

Below the two biggest Victorian rivalries sits a group of fixtures that are serious without being defining, and they are worth naming because supporters treat them as major and outsiders often miss them entirely.

Richmond against Collingwood has the longest continuous claim. The two districts sit either side of the Yarra and the clubs have met repeatedly in finals across a century, including the 1980 grand final that Richmond won by a very large margin and which Collingwood supporters treat as the low point of a bleak run. The fixture was strong enough in 1977 that a Collingwood-Richmond match on Anzac Day drew a crowd big enough to give Kevin Sheedy the idea he acted on eighteen years later.

Richmond against Carlton runs on similar lines, with the added complication that both clubs have had long stretches of dominance separated by long stretches of failure, so the fixture alternates between enormous and irrelevant on a roughly generational cycle.

St Kilda against Collingwood is a smaller rivalry with one enormous match at its centre: the 2010 grand final, which was drawn, and the replay a week later, which Collingwood won comfortably. For St Kilda supporters, a club with a single premiership in more than a century and a half, that fortnight is the defining shared memory.

North Melbourne against Hawthorn, Essendon against Hawthorn and the Western Bulldogs against Geelong all have periods where they mattered intensely and periods where they did not. The Victorian competition has enough clubs packed into one city that almost any pairing can produce a decade of hostility if both sides are good at the same time.

Rivalries that faded or ended

Not every rivalry survives. Fitzroy against Collingwood was one of the oldest in the competition and ended when Fitzroy merged into the Brisbane Bears after the 1996 season. South Melbourne's Victorian rivalries effectively ended when the club relocated to Sydney in the early 1980s, and the Swans spent two decades without a natural enemy until GWS was created for them.

Others simply went quiet. Hawthorn against Melbourne was a genuine grudge in the 1980s and is now an ordinary fixture. Essendon against Richmond, once a serious Victorian rivalry, has faded through a long period in which the two clubs were rarely good simultaneously.

The pattern is consistent. Rivalry needs both clubs to be relevant at the same time. Ten years of one side being poor is usually enough to reduce a grudge to a fact in a record book.

How a new supporter inherits a rivalry

You do not choose your rivalries; they arrive with the club. If you pick Collingwood you inherit Carlton and Essendon on day one. If you pick Port Adelaide you inherit the Crows and a set of arguments from 1990 that you had nothing to do with.

The useful advice for a newcomer is to learn one origin story properly rather than adopting the general hostility. Knowing why the Showdown is bitter — the injunction, the composite side, the six-year wait — makes the match watchable in a way that simply disliking the other jumper does not. The same applies to the 1910 brawl, to Kennett's comments, and to the Harmes goal in 1979.

How rivalry shows up on the field

Coaches say publicly that a derby is worth four premiership points like any other match, and they are lying about half the time. The evidence that these games are different shows up in a few measurable places.

Scoring tends to be lower and the margins tighter. The Kennett curse run is the clearest example — nine of eleven matches inside ten points — but the pattern shows up in the Showdown and the Western Derby as well, because both sides defend harder and take fewer risks going forward.

Umpiring attention increases. Free kick counts in derbies are scrutinised by both fan bases and by the clubs, and the match review process examines derby incidents more closely because they are watched by more people. That has changed behaviour: the sort of brawl that produced the Demolition Derby in 2000 is now effectively priced out of the game by suspension lengths.

And selection changes. Clubs pick specialist stoppers for derbies, hold players who are marginally underdone rather than resting them, and bring forward returns from injury. The 2026 removal of the medical substitute sharpened that calculation, because a club that loses a player early now finishes the match a man down rather than activating a replacement.

Reading a head-to-head record honestly

Three cautions before you quote a number from this page or anywhere else.

Counts differ. Some records include night series and pre-season competitions, some do not, and the totals for the older Victorian rivalries can vary by several matches depending on which convention is used.

Series leads move. A close series like Carlton and Collingwood, separated by about eight wins across 270 matches, can shift meaningfully within a couple of seasons.

And a head-to-head number tells you almost nothing about why a rivalry exists. Brisbane lead the QClash by a margin that would suggest a dead fixture; it is not a dead fixture. Carlton and Collingwood are separated by a handful of wins across 130 years; that closeness is exactly the point.

Where to go next

If you want the club-by-club background behind these fixtures, start with the Victorian clubs and then the interstate clubs. For the single biggest fixture of the season, read the Anzac Day clash. For how the game came to exist in the first place, and why the first written rules were only ten lines long, see the origins of Australian rules football.

For the grounds themselves, the MCG guide covers the venue that hosts the largest of these matches, and the broader Australia hub links the rest of the section. If you want to compare how another Australian code handles the same problem, the sports index is the place to start.