The AFL’s Anzac Day game: how a shared tradition became a two-club monopoly

On Anzac Day, Collingwood and Essendon will meet at the MCG for their annual blockbuster in front of more than 90,000 people.

The clash, first staged in 1995, honours those who served in the Australian forces.

It is the biggest home-and-away game of the season, and arguably second only to the grand final on the AFL calendar.

Essendon and Collingwood have become synonymous with the occasion. Our research shows this was not always the case.

The origins of a ‘tradition’

From 1960 to 1994, Anzac Day football was shared among clubs – a history largely displaced.

That displacement began in 1995, when a crowd of 94,825 watched Collingwood and Essendon play out a thrilling draw.

Almost immediately, the two clubs asserted an ongoing claim over Anzac Day football.

The media assisted with that claim. By April 1996 – before a second match had even been played – Age journalists were referring to it as “entrenched” in the annual fixture, and as the “traditional” Anzac Day clash.

In the years since, the origins of the match have been reinvented.

Then-Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy has been recognised as the architect of the Anzac Day game. Although the exact details have changed over the years, Sheedy worked with the Returned & Services League of Australia (RSL) and Collingwood to stage the 1995 clash.

Retrospectively it has been claimed the match was conceptualised as an annual event from the beginning. In fact, there is no evidence from 1995 – in RSL documents, the AFL Football Record, media reports, or Sheedy’s own words – that the match was conceived as anything other than a one-off.

Post-1995 Anzac Day football, then, is not the story of a carefully conceived tradition, but of one assembled in the aftermath of a hugely successful, single match.

Anzac Day footy in the 1960s

Anzac Day football did not begin in 1995 but in 1960, when the RSL pushed for matches with Victorian government support.

From the outset, the day carried commemorative elements, including a minute’s silence before the match.

Over the next 35 years, 79 games were played on Anzac days.

The league adopted a shared model, with matches rotated across clubs and venues, typically staging two or more games on the day.

All clubs participated and none was given privileged access.

This history, and the prevailing sentiment of a shared occasion, has been mostly forgotten.

An uneven playing field

By the early 1990s, Anzac Day football had become inconsistent, with fluctuating crowds and uneven scheduling.

In 1994, Anzac Day fell on a Monday, but Collingwood and Essendon met at the MCG on the Saturday two days prior. On the Monday, the AFL fixtured a low-profile St Kilda-Richmond match at Waverley, which drew little interest.

Commentators argued at the time the Collingwood–Essendon fixture should have been played on Anzac Day instead.

So the idea was already in public circulation a year before the groundbreaking Essendon-Collingwood draw.

Between 1960 and 1994, Essendon played 15 times on Anzac Day (including on ten Saturdays when all football was played) and Collingwood just ten times (including five Saturdays). Neither team had a longstanding association with Anzac Day football.

By contrast, Carlton, Geelong, Melbourne and Richmond collectively played on Anzac Day 70 times from 1960 to 1994. Yet these four teams have played on the day just six times between them since 1995.

The benefits to Collingwood and Essendon are considerable: a lucrative source of revenue, a way to entice new recruits and an opportunity for their players to experience a finals-like atmosphere at the MCG.

While the AFL often schedules multiple games across the country when Anzac Day falls on a Saturday, by far the grandest fixture is the Collingwood-Essendon clash at the MCG.

Critics (including former longtime Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse) have argued the marquee fixture should be shared.

Is it time to share the love?

Other clubs have also lost players to war, yet are almost always excluded from playing in front of their fans on the day and remembering their sacrifices.

Recognising the longer, 66-year history of Anzac Day football – during more than half of which the shared model prevailed – does not diminish the occasion. Rather, it exposes what has been lost and misconstrued.

The Collingwood-Essendon stranglehold is presented as an established tradition, yet it rests on a narrower history. It also sits uneasily with the AFL’s stated commitment to a fair and equitable competition, and with the egalitarian values Anzac Day is supposed to represent.

What was once a shared occasion across the competition is now jealously guarded by two clubs who have the honour of playing every year on Anzac Day.

This matters given Anzac Day’s deep cultural significance, and restricts how AFL fans are able to commemorate Australia’s most sacred secular day.