How to play — Aussie Rules

Australian rules has been keeping records since 1897 — longer than the NBA or the NHL — inside a competition small enough that the same clubs meet each other every single year.

The board

8 seats: RUCK · MID1 · MID2 · MID3 · FWD1 · FWD2 · DEF1 · DEF2. Eight seats: a ruck, three midfielders, two forwards and two defenders. The ruck is the seat with no equivalent elsewhere on this site, and the midfield is where the run is usually won or lost.

The rounds

Each round opens one club in one era. There are few enough clubs that you will meet them all, across a history long enough that the same club appears a century apart.

The season

23 games, then a 3-game playoff gauntlet at 19 wins — 26–0 for the sweep. Twenty-three home-and-away rounds and then three finals — twenty-six results. The home-and-away season forgives a flat week; September does not, and one final going wrong takes the flag and the record with it.

• 26–0 — the perfect season.
• 24 wins or more — the top tier.
• 21 or more — a strong finish.
• 19 or more — you reached the playoffs.
• 7 or more — middling.
• the rest — the roast comes with the verdict.

What the record holds

Records reach back to 1897 — longer than the NBA or the NHL — with 336 figures in the hall. The competition has had comparatively few clubs and a great many players, so the hall is a narrow gate, and a history that long means the same club can appear on the board a century apart from itself.

What decides it

Umpires vote the Brownlow round by round through the whole season, which makes it a verdict on consistency rather than a highlight reel — exactly the quality an unbeaten run asks for. Australian rules also asks more of the body than any other code here: players cover more ground than in soccer and are tackled while doing it, so a side that stays available through twenty-six matches is doing something the raw talent on the card cannot tell you. How the ratings work · the full rulebook.

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