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Amateur football is as old as the game itself, but roseate notions of a nineteenth century idyll during which no heed whatsoever was paid to monetary considerations are probably misplaced. Indeed, as long as football of any kind has been played, there have been those who have been quick to perceive its pecuniary potential, initially mainly in terms of gambling, but before very long it was clear to those who habitually profited from such things that football was, in essence, a commodity, and as such had market value. Once that had been recognised, there was no way that football at its top level would ever conform to amateur ideals; all that remained was to formalise and regulate that state of affairs, and in so doing extricate it from the quagmire of subterfuge and concealment in which it had come to exist by the close of the nineteenth century.
Given that, for almost half a century, much of the economic activity related to football was conducted in a more or less clandestine manner there was no need for leagues and controlling bodies to use the word 'amateur' in their titles. Thus, for example, when the body which today is known as the Victorian Amateur Football Association was born in 1892 it was known as the Metropolitan Junior Football Association, with the word 'amateur' replacing 'junior' only after the VFL had laid its cards on the table in terms of payment to players in 1911. It was a similar story in South Australia where, thanks largely to the efforts of the Adelaide University Football Club, an amateur competition got underway in 1911. Perceived at the time as a response to the emerging professionalism of the game, it was more probably, in essence, a reaction by the University to the SAFA/L's persistent refusal to admit it to its ranks. For several years, the University's only fixtures each year were home and away against its Melbourne counterpart, but following the admission of Melbourne University to the VFL in 1908 the Adelaide students were confined to playing matches among themselves. The answer, clearly, was the establishment of a new competition, and it was in order to create a level playing field as much as anything that that competition, the South Australian Amateur Football League, restricted itself to clubs which did not pay their players.
The chief hotbed of amateur football remained Melbourne, however. During the 1920s the number of clubs comprising the VAFA more than quadrupled, with most of those clubs fielding several teams each Saturday. Moreover, the VAFA was an extremely progressive, forward thinking organisation. It was the first controlling body in Australia to introduce a Tribunal, for instance, as well as the first to allow the replacement during a game of injured players. Somewhat more controversially perhaps, the VAFA also gave its umpires the power to dismiss from the field players deemed guilty of grievous offences.
The first interstate amateur match took place between Victoria and South Australia on the Melbourne Cricket Ground on 8th June 1925, with the Victorians winning handsomely by 90 points. Representative fixtures quickly became a key feature of the amateur football calendar, initially just in Victoria and South Australia, but eventually in Tasmania and Western Australia as well.
Organised amateur football in Tasmania got underway in 1931 with the formation, in Launceston, of the Tasmanian Amateur Football Association. The following year saw the birth of the Hobart-based Public Schools Old Boys' Association which, given that it conformed to the same amateur ideals as the TAFA, was quick to affiliate with it. This north-south structure to the TAFA has been maintained ever since and, unusually for an island where regional rivalries tend to be both intense and unremitting, it has tended to function both efficiently and harmoniously.
The Western Australian Amateur Football Association had been established in 1927, with six clubs, a total that had grown to sixteen by the onset of World War Two. However, during the 1920s and '30s the definition of 'amateur' to which the WAFA adhered was unacceptable to the eastern states, and so when the Australian Amateur Football Association came into being on 3rd June 1933 membership was confined to Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. Despite this, when the inaugural AAFC interstate championships took place in Adelaide in 1936, Western Australia was involved, as was the New South Wales National Football League, both teams being invited to participate in order to create a more viable competition.
That first series was won by Victoria, as were thirteen more of the twenty carnivals conducted in five different cities between 1936 and 1994. The remaining half a dozen carnivals were won by South Australia (five) and Western Australia (one). Detailed results for all twenty AAFC carnivals are included in this section of the website. Also included are results of representative matches engaged in by the various state bodies, as well as results of matches contested by the Australian Amateurs combined team.
In 1996, amidst confusion and disagreement over the definition of amateur status, the AAFC disbanded. Meanwhile, annual interstate matches between Victoria and South Australia continued, but Western Australia and Tasmania were not involved. In 2001 the AAFC was reconstituted with the vision of "strengthening communities through football". Since then, with the introduction of an official 'Triennial series', involving under-23 teams from each state playing the other two both home and away over the course of several seasons, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia have resumed regular interstate contests. The inaugural series, which ran between 2002 and 2004, was won by Victoria, with the second series commencing the following year and scheduled to end in 2007. The AAFC has also conducted 'compromise rules' matches against Ireland.
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