Australian Football for Anzac Day

Australian football for Anzac Day; In attendance at the 2008 Anzac Day National Service at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra are Angus Houston, Chief of the Defence Force (Australia) (left), Murray Gleeson then Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, Jon Stanhope, Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory (centre), Peter Cosgrove, immediate past Chief of the Defence Force (Australia) (second from right), and Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia (right).

During many wars, Australian rules football matches have been played overseas in places like northern Africa, Vietnam, and Iraq as a celebration of Australian culture and as a bonding exercise between soldiers. In 1975, the VFL/AFL first commemorated Anzac Day and the Anzac spirit with a match of Australian rules football between Essendon and Carlton in a one-off match in front of a large crowd of 77,770 at VFL Park, Waverley, with Essendon coming out winners.

The modern-day tradition began in 1995 and is played every year between traditional AFL rivals Collingwood and Essendon at the MCG. This annual match is often considered the biggest of the AFL season outside of the finals, sometimes drawing bigger crowds than all but the Grand Final, and often selling out in advance. A record crowd of 94,825 people attended the inaugural match in 1995. The Anzac Medal is awarded to the player in the match who best exemplifies the Anzac spirit – skill, courage, self-sacrifice, teamwork and fair play.

In 2013, St Kilda and the Sydney Swans played an Anzac Day game in Wellington, New Zealand, the first AFL game played for premiership points outside of Australia.The winning team, Sydney, were presented with the inaugural Simpson-Henderson Trophy by the Prime Minister of New Zealand. The trophy was named after two notable Anzac soldiers: John Simpson Kirkpatrick and Richard Alexander Henderson.

Rugby League football

Beginning in 1997, the Anzac Test, a rugby league test match, has commemorated Anzac Day, though it is typically played a week prior to Anzac Day. The match is always played between the Australian and New Zealand national teams, and has drawn attendances of between 20,000 and 45,000 in the past.

Domestically, matches have been played on Anzac Day since 1927 (with occasional exceptions). Since 2002, the National Rugby League (NRL) has followed the lead of the Australian Football League, hosting a match between traditional rivals St George Illawarra Dragons and the Sydney Roosters each year to commemorate Anzac Day in the Club ANZAC Game, although these two sides had previously met on Anzac Day several times as early as the 1970s. Since 2009, an additional Anzac Day game has been played between the Melbourne Storm and New Zealand Warriors.