McClelland Trophy
Trophy in Australian rule football / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The McClelland Trophy is an Australian rules football club championship trophy, awarded each year to the club with the best aggregate performance across the Australian Football League (AFL) and AFL Women's (AFLW) home-and-away seasons.[1]
The trophy was inaugurated in 1951. From 1951 to 1990, it was a club championship award presented to the club with the highest aggregate performance across the three grades of competition that were sanctioned by the VFL/AFL - seniors, reserves, and under-19s - with senior wins carrying a higher value.
In 1991, the club championship format was abandoned; this after several interstate clubs had joined the AFL seniors without competing in the minor grades, as well as the announcement that the under-19s competition was to end after the 1991 season.[2] From 1991 to 2022, the trophy was instead presented to the minor premiers, that is the club that finished the AFL home-and-away season on top of the senior ladder.
In 2022, the AFL Women's competition expanded such that all AFL clubs fielded both a men's and women's team. Thus from 2023, the club championship format resumed, with the men's and women's seasons given roughly equal weightings overall – and therefore each individual match in the shorter women's season having a higher weighting than each match in the longer men's season. The prize includes $1 million in prize money to be shared equally between the club and its AFL and AFLW players.
Teams that win the trophy are given a simplified replica of the middle panel of the perpetual trophy, which features the AFL lettering and a round die-cast of McClelland.