Australian Rules Football Trivia
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56 free Australian Rules Football trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Australian rules football trivia quiz covers the game from Tom Wills' 1858 letter to the modern AFL. The easy questions are the ones any footy fan knows: how many points a goal is worth, how many players a side, what a mark is, how far you can run before bouncing, where the Grand Final is played and which company makes the ball. From there it moves into the history: the Melbourne Football Club's ten rules of 1859, the running bounce of 1866, the VFL breakaway of 1897, South Melbourne's move to Sydney and the renaming to the AFL in 1990. The hard end covers the record books and the honours: the 1970 Grand Final crowd of 121,696 and Jesaulenko's mark, the drawn deciders of 1948 and 1977, the Brownlow's 3-2-1 votes and the fairest clause, the Norm Smith and Coleman medals, Tony Lockett's 1,360 goals, Gary Ablett's nine in a losing Grand Final, Leigh Matthews' player-of-the-century status, the Marn Grook theory, the Barassi Line, AFLW's first premiers and the international rules series with Ireland. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the sport, the AFL, its awards, grounds and players, and each question links to the page that establishes it. Fifty questions, free, with an explanation after every answer.
30 of 56 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many points is a goal worth in Australian rules football?
Six
Six points come from kicking the ball between the two tall goal posts untouched; if another player gets a hand to it on the way, or it passes between a goal post and a behind post, it earns a single point.
Q 02Which AFL player, usually the tallest, contests the ball-ups and boundary throw-ins?
The ruckman
The ruckman leaps at each ball-up and boundary throw-in to tap the ball down to a running teammate, and only one nominated ruck from each side is allowed to contest it.
Q 03What must a player running with the ball do at least once every 15 metres?
Bounce it
Bounce it on the ground, or bend to touch it there: a runner who goes further without doing so gives away a free kick, a rule written into the laws in 1866.
Q 04A player who cleanly catches a kick that has travelled at least 15 metres is awarded what?
A mark
A mark stops play and gives the catcher an unhurried kick from that spot, which is why players leap onto opponents' backs to take one; a kick caught after less than 15 metres is simply play on.
Q 05What sounds to end each quarter of an AFL match?
A siren
A siren ends each 20-minute quarter, but a player awarded a kick just before it sounded still gets to take it, so a match can be won after the siren.
Q 06Which company makes the standard match ball used in the AFL?
Sherrin
Sherrin's own story is that founder Thomas Sherrin was handed a misshapen ball to fix in 1880 and gave it rounder ends for a truer bounce, the shape the game then adopted.
Q 07Which two ball colours are the only ones used at AFL level?
Red and yellow
Red and yellow: the yellow ball is used for games starting after 3 pm or under a closed roof because it is easier to see, including for the officials doing score reviews.
Q 08Tom Wills's famous 1858 letter urged a "foot-ball club" to keep which sportsmen fit through winter?
Cricketers
Cricketers: Wills, a star of the colony's team, wanted them kept fit in the off-season, and within a year the response to his letter had produced a football club in Melbourne and its first written rules.
Q 09Tom Wills was educated at which English public school, where he played an early form of football?
Rugby
Rugby School gave Wills his football, yet he judged its game "unsuitable for grown men" who had a living to earn, and pushed Melbourne's players to write rules of their own in 1859.
Q 10The landmark 1858 schoolboy match umpired by Tom Wills pitted Melbourne Grammar against which school?
Scotch College
Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar played 40 a side for a draw of one goal each, and the two schools now meet every year for the Cordner-Eggleston Cup.
Q 11In what kind of building did four Melbourne Football Club members write the game's first rules in May 1859?
A pub
A pub: Tom Wills and three others drew up ten rules at the Parade Hotel, run by football promoter Jerry Bryant, and the club had them printed and sent around the colony.
Q 12The 1859 Melbourne rules banned "hacking", which meant doing what?
Kicking an opponent's shins
Kicking an opponent's shins was banned to spare working men injuries they could not afford; a quarrel over the same practice later helped split England's footballers into two rival codes.
Q 13The original Melbourne rules notably left out which law common to English school football?
Offside
Q 21Which club is the only pre-existing non-Victorian club to have joined the AFL, in 1997?
Port Adelaide
Port Adelaide had secretly negotiated to join alone in 1991, but the other SANFL clubs went to court, a new composite side called the Crows took the licence instead, and Port waited six more years.
Q 22Which two clubs were added to the AFL in 2011 and 2012, bringing it to 18 teams?
Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney
Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney were both planted in rugby league country, and each launched with a league convert as its headline signing: Karmichael Hunt and Israel Folau.
Q 23The imaginary line dividing rugby-following New South Wales and Queensland from the rest of Australia is named after which VFL star?
Offside never entered the Melbourne rules, so players could, and still can, take up position anywhere on the field, however far ahead of the ball they stand.
Q 14Which Aboriginal ball game do some believe influenced Tom Wills when he helped shape Australian football?
Marn Grook
Marn Grook prized high leaps to catch a kicked ball, but there is only circumstantial evidence that Wills ever knew the game.
Q 15Which cousin of Tom Wills, later hailed as the "father of Australian football", drafted the revised rules adopted in 1866?
H. C. A. Harrison
H. C. A. Harrison, the colony's champion sprinter for nine years, took up football at Wills' invitation and wrote the right to run with the ball into the 1866 code.
Q 16The oldest football club in Australia outside Victoria was formed in 1860 in which city?
Adelaide
Adelaide had a football club within two years of Melbourne's first matches, and South Australia formed the sport's first governing body in April 1877, a few weeks before Victoria managed it.
Q 17Which of the VFL's eight founding clubs of 1897 took until 1966 to win its first premiership?
St Kilda
St Kilda was one of two clubs the six breakaway sides invited along, and when its premiership finally came, 69 years on, it was won by a single point.
Q 18Which two clubs joined the VFL in 1908?
Richmond and University
Richmond and University: the students' club never paid its players, lost its last 51 games in a row as rivals turned professional, and dropped out after 1914.
Q 19Which VFL club relocated to Sydney in 1982 and became the Swans?
South Melbourne
South Melbourne had been losing money for years and its chairman feared the club would disintegrate, so the board chose Sydney and made it the first VFL club to move interstate.
Q 20Which two cities gained VFL teams in 1987?
Perth and Brisbane
Perth and Brisbane: the Eagles and the Bears each had to pay a multimillion-dollar licence fee that the old clubs never faced, money that helped keep struggling Victorian sides alive.
Ron Barassi
Ron Barassi preached that the game should spread across the whole country, so historian Ian Turner put his name on the dividing line in a 1978 lecture.
Q 24The AFL Grand Final is traditionally played on the afternoon of the last Saturday of which month?
September
September's last Saturday is so fixed in Victorian life that, since 2015, the Friday before the Grand Final has been a public holiday across the state.
Q 25Which club led the 1970 Grand Final by 44 points at half-time and lost?
Collingwood
Collingwood's collapse fed the legend of the Colliwobbles: between its 1958 and 1990 premierships the club reached nine Grand Finals and won none, losing eight and drawing one.
Q 26Which forward took the famous 1970 Grand Final mark that prompted the commentator's cry of "...you beauty"?
Alex Jesaulenko
Alex Jesaulenko climbed onto the shoulders of Graeme Jenkin to take it, and Mike Williamson's cry of "Oh, Jesaulenko, you beauty!" became as famous as the mark itself.
Q 27Which three clubs shared the record of 16 VFL/AFL premierships at the end of 2025?
Carlton, Collingwood and Essendon
Carlton, Collingwood and Essendon each had 16, but two of Essendon's, in 1897 and 1924, were won without a Grand Final because those seasons ended in a round-robin finals series.
Q 28Which club became the first non-Victorian side to win a Grand Final, in 1992?
West Coast
West Coast, in only its sixth season, won by 28 points a year after losing its first decider, and the premiership cup left Victoria for the first time.
Q 29Which club won three premierships in a row from 2001 to 2003?
Brisbane Lions
Brisbane Lions won three deciders running and came within one game of a fourth straight premiership before Port Adelaide stopped them in the 2004 Grand Final.
Q 30With the MCG requisitioned by the military in the Second World War, Grand Finals moved to which club's Princes Park?
Carlton
Carlton's Princes Park staged the 1942, 1943 and 1945 deciders while American and Australian servicemen were quartered at the MCG; the last was so violent it is remembered as the Bloodbath.