Grand Final is a predominantly Australian sport term used to describe a match that decides a league champion.
It originated in Victoria and South Australia and has become specifically significant Australian culture. Notable competitions which play a Grand Final include the Australian Football League (AFL Grand Final), the National Rugby League (NRL Grand Final), Europe's Super League, the A-League, the Women's National Basketball League, the ANZ Netball Championship.
Championship Game are more frequently used in the United States and Europe.
Contents |
The use of the Anglo-Norman term "grand" to describe a sporting event in Australia dates back to the 1850s. Its use may have been borrowed from the term "Grand Finale" which was used in Europe for centuries to describe the last and most exciting part of a play, opera, or other entertainment.[1]
Use of the term in Australian Football dates back to the first organised and widely publicised match between Melbourne Grammar School and Scotch College on August 7, 1858 at Yarra Park, Melbourne (formerly Richmond Park). The game was advertised as the "grand football match" in the Melbourne Morning Herald and several other local newspapers.[2]
In 1859, a "grand football match" was advertised in Richmond, Tasmania for St Patrick's Day on Friday 18 March.[3]
Mentioned in The Argus of 1861, the Royal Caledonian Society of Melbourne invited clubs to compete in a "grand football-match" which was to be football's first ever trophy, the Caledonian Challenge Cup, however the match did not proceed until the following year.
The earliest known event described as "grand" in Sydney was a cricket match in 1862.[4]
When the two top teams of the 1871 South Yarra Challenge Cup were on even wins, a "grand match" (advertised in The Argus) was announced to decide the championship.
Initially, a football premiership final appeared to be called a "grand final" only when the losers of a final were the minor premiers and they exercised the "right to challenge" the winners to a second premiership decider.[5]
The New South Wales Rugby League experimented with a finals system in 1908, its inaugural year, but abandoned it the following season. Finals were reintroduced in 1926, and the premiership decider appeared to only be called a "grand final" if it involved the minor premiers.
By the 1930s, the NSWRL adopted the term "grand final" to describe the premiership decider.[6] Up until 1954 a 'grand final' match was only held if the minor premiers were beaten.[7] The adoption of the VFL's Page-McIntyre system for the 1954 NSWRFL season meant for the first time grand finals would become necessary every season, so the term Grand Final has become used to describe all premiership deciders.
The tradition is maintained by the present-day NRL National Rugby League.
Possibly the first Grand Finals of any kind occurred in the sport of Australian rules football in the South Australian Football Association (SAFA, now SANFL), on October 7, 1889. At that time, premierships were decided simply upon end-of-season ladder placings, but the game was necessitated when Norwood and Port Adelaide finished equal on wins and goals. In promoting the decider match, local press dubbed the match a "grand final". Norwood won the game 7.4 (46) to 5.9 (39).
The following years saw two more Grand Finals necessitated by ties at the top of the ladder. In 1894, Norwood played South Adelaide; the game was drawn 4.8 (32) apiece, leading to the first of only five Grand Final Replays in senior Australian football history. Norwood won the replay 4.7 (31) to South Adelaide 3.5 (23).
Then, in 1896, in the (then) Victorian Football Association teams Collingwood and South Melbourne Football Clubs gave Victoria its first "Grand Final".[8] In 1896 two teams were ranked equal on each of the stipulated premiership criteria; and, so, in the last year of their participation in the VFA competition, Collingwood and South Melbourne played a hastily arranged, previously unscheduled elimination match in order to determine the premiership.[9] The match was tied until the last moments, with Collingwood winning by 6 goals to South Melbourne's 5 goals.[10]
In 1897, when eight teams broke away from the VFA to form the VFL, the concept of finals football was high on the agenda, with teams buoyed by the success and attendances of the 1896 Grand Final. Over the following ten years, all top-level Australian football leagues had adopted a finals structure.
In 1931 the VFL adopted a system, the Page-McIntyre system, which ensured a Grand Final, and the concept became entrenched.
The term "Grand Final" was introduced to Europe in 1995 in a completely different sport—golf. In that year, the Challenge Tour, the official developmental tour for the European Tour, launched its season-ending Challenge Tour Grand Final. British rugby league would adopt the term in 1998, two years after the start of Super League. The Super League Grand Final has now become an accepted part of the British scene, and the term 'grand final' is used to describe the final of leagues below Super League as well, such as the Championship, Championship 1 and the Conference. Prior to this, a Championship Final was introduced to determine the winner of the British Rugby Football League Championship in 1904, though it only became a regular fixture from 1906 onwards. In 1973, the competition format was changed so that the championship was won by the team finishing top of the league table, with an end of season knock-out competition for the top teams that became known as the Premiership being created.
The Celtic League (currently the RaboDirect Pro12 for sponsorship reasons), a top-level rugby union competition involving teams from Ireland, Scotland, Wales and since 2010–11 Italy, introduced a playoff system to determine its champion for the 2009–10 season. (Although the league conducted a knockout competition in its early years, it was a parallel cup competition instead of a championship tournament.) The final match of the new playoff is branded as a Grand Final.
| League (Region) | Sport | Event | Year first used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Super League (Europe) | Rugby League | Super League Grand Final | 1998 |
| National Rugby League (Australia) | Rugby League | NRL Grand Final | 1931 (Australian Rugby League) (1908 if Minor Premiers were challenged) |
| Australian Football League (Australia) | Australian rules football | AFL Grand Final | 1898 |
| A-League (Australia) | Association Football | 2004 | |
| South Australian National Football League (Australia) | Australian rules football | SANFL Grand Final | 1889 |
| Victorian Football League (Australia) | Australian rules football | VFL Grand Final | 1896 |
| RaboDirect Pro12 (Europe) | Rugby Union | RaboDirect Pro12 Grand Final | 2010 |
| Women's National Basketball League (Australia) | Basketball | WNBL Grand Final | 2006 |
| Commonwealth Bank Trophy (Australia) | Netball | 1997 | |
| Challenge Tour (Europe) | Golf | Challenge Tour Grand Final | 1995 |