St Kilda struggled in the new league losing their first 48 games before finally breaking through in the 1st round of the 1900 season defeating Melbourne by 1 point.  The game finished with the scores deadlocked on 68 points apiece but St Kilda successfully argued that one of Melbourne’s points had been scored after the three-quarter time bell so the game was awarded to St Kilda. Success for the Saints was short-lived though with St Kilda losing their remaining 13 games in 1900 and their first 12 games in 1901 before posting another victory.

Round 1 of 1903 saw Geelong defeat St Kilda by 50 points meaning that St Kilda had managed to win only 2 of their first 100 League games.  But by round 6 that same year something had changed.  St Kilda started winning and finished the year in 5th position on the ladder with 6 wins just missing out on the Final Four.

In 1908 Richmond and University joined the VFL.  Both teams were immediately competitive. Richmond winning their first League match against Melbourne then going on to complete the season with 6 victories.  University had to wait until round 2 to record their first win when they defeated fellow newcomer Richmond.  They finished the season in 6th place with 8 wins.

By 1912 University were in decline.  They only won 1 game that year against St Kilda and were unable to record a victory in either of the following two seasons.  Struggling to attract players, University disbanded before the start of the 1915 season having lost their final 51 games. University was the first VFL team to feel the pressure of players joining the forces fighting in WWI. The 1916 season saw Essendon, Geelong, Melbourne, St Kilda and South Melbourne go into recess.  With just four teams remaining in the League, Fitzroy achieved the unusual distinction of finishing last yet under the Final Four system they competed in the finals and won the premiership. Geelong and South Melbourne rejoined the League in 1917 with St Kilda and Essendon coming back the following season.  Melbourne returned to the League in 1919 after the war had finished. The VFL expanded to 12 teams in 1925 when North Melbourne, Footscray and Hawthorn joined. The newcomers filled the bottom three spots on the 1925 ladder recording 5, 4 and 3 wins respectively. The late 1920s were dominated by Collingwood.  Runners-up in 1925 and 1926, they won 4 premierships in a row from1927-30 losing just 10 games along the way.  They were a machine, propelling their prolific full-forward Gordon Coventry to a 1,299 goal career.

Collingwood’s four premierships in a row remained unchallenged until the 1950s.  Melbourne were runners-up in 1954, when Footscray won their first premiership, before a run of 3 premierships in 55, 56 and 57.  Fate pitched them against Collingwood in the 1958 Grand Final.  Collingwood won by 3 goals ensuring their record remained unequalled.  Melbourne won the 1959 and 1960 premierships making it five flags from their seven consecutive Grand Final appearances.

Collingwood again featured when St Kilda won the premiership in 1966 by a solitary point becoming the last of the original 8 VFL teams to win a flag. The 1972 season saw the number of teams playing in the finals increased from 4 to 5 with the introduction of the McIntyre Final Five system.  This allowed an extra two matches to be played during the 4 week duration of the finals bringing additional gate receipts to the League. For the following decade, despite the extra money from finals, several VFL teams felt the pinch financially.  The VFL were eyeing expansion into Sydney, Australia’s biggest city. But with a preference for Rugby League rather than Australian Rules Football breaking into the Sydney sports market would not be easy.  With VFL encouragement, South Melbourne relocated to Sydney during the 1981 post-season and became the Sydney Swans starting and unparalleled period of change for the VFL.

The VFL expanded into Western Australian and Queensland with the inclusion of newly formed teams, the West Coast Eagles and the Brisbane Bears.  These new teams both won their first games.  Brisbane defeating North Melbourne at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) with West Coast beat Richmond at Subiaco.  The Bears finished the year 13th with 6 wins while the Eagles were 8th with 11 wins.

With three teams based outside Victoria the VFL was renamed the Australian Football League (AFL) in 1990.  Towards the end of that year the most successful South Australian team, Port Adelaide, made a bold bid to join the AFL.  Their bid was thwarted when the South Australian League (SANFL) formed the Adelaide Crows who were accepted into the AFL expanding the competition to all five Australian mainland States.

The Crows hit the competition with a bang in the first round of 1991 beating Hawthorn by 86 points at Football Park but finished the season in 9th place with 10 wins.

The 1991 season also saw the expansion of the Finals system to a Final Six.  Also devised by McIntyre, the Final Six had it’s problems.  It was tweaked in 1992 when West Coast became the first non-Victorian team to win the premiership although with the Brisbane Bears Reserves winning  the premiership in the curtain-raiser it could be argued that Brisbane holds that honour.  In any case, the Eagles were the first non-Victorian team to win a senior flag and by 1994 when they added a second one, the Final Six system had been replaced by a Final Eight. With only 15 teams in the League, a Final Eight meant more teams made the finals than missed  out.  That was rectified in 1995 the Fremantle Dockers became the second Western Australian team to join the AFL.  Freo lost their first two games before breaking through in round 3 against Fitzroy at the Western Oval.  They finished the year with 8 wins in 13th place.

1996 marked the 100th season of VFL/AFL football.  The AFL celebrated the entire season as its centenary and scheduled a series of re-enactment games in round 7 where teams wore replica  uniforms from the 1890s.  Over 75,000 people saw Essendon defeat Geelong in the first game of that round at the MCG on a Wednesday night.  Two days later more than 70,000 fans again made there way to the MCG to watch St Kilda defeat Collingwood.

Cynics suggest the AFL celebrated the centenary a year early because Fitzroy, one of the foundation teams, were in such financial trouble that they would not see the season out.  It was no surprise when in July 1996 it was announced that Fitzroy would merge with another team.  The expected partner was North Melbourne but when the announcement was made it was the Brisbane Bears who were the other team.  Fitzroy and the Bears played out the 1996 season before forming the Brisbane Lions for the 1997 season.  Melbourne would have merged with Hawthorn that same year it had not been rejected by the members of both clubs at emotion charged meetings.  North Melbourne went on to win the Grand Final against Sydney earning a gold premiership cup to mark the Centenary. To maintain 16 teams, Port Adelaide Power were admitted to the AFL in 1997.  The Power were separate from the powerful SANFL team the Port Adelaide Magpies but they claimed a shared history with both teams based a Alberton Oval. Port Adelaide lost their first two games in 1997 to Collingwood and Essendon before defeating Geelong in round 3 at Football Park in Adelaide.  Brisbane Lions also lost in round 1 but rebounded in round 2 defeating St Kilda by 97 points in their first home game at the Gabba.  Port and the Lions fought out 8th spot on the ladder each having 10 wins and a draw.  Brisbane played in the finals due to their superior percentage.  Perhaps inspired by the inclusion of their cross-town rivals, Adelaide won their first premiership in 1997.  They went back-to-back winning again in 1998.

The finals system was changed again in 2000.  The number of teams remained at 8 but the AFL did not want the match-ups from week one to be repeated in week 3.  The changes brought more  uncertainty and complexity to the finals match-ups but at this stage remains the AFL’s preferred system.

The early 21st century belonged to the non-Victorian clubs.  Brisbane won 3 flags in a row in 2001, 02 and 03 before falling to Port Adelaide in 2004 leaving Collingwood’s 4-in-a-row untouched. The Sydney Swans won the premiership in 2005 breaking a 72 year drought since South Melbourne had won in 1933.

The future of the AFL looks as interesting as the past.  Victorian teams with exciting squads such as St Kilda and Geelong are pushing for the premiership while Brisbane, Adelaide and West Coast continue to look strong.  Fremantle remains the only team not to have won a flag but no doubt their time will come.

For more information visit Rugby League Merchandise

Lottery was used in ancient China in the form of Keno slips and the amount was used to finance defense and infrastructure projects. Most lotteries were used by different governments for similar purposes like uplifting their poor, settling colonies and supporting social causes. However, as time elapsed the rewards of the lottery were handed over to the winner of the lottery ticket or form who could use the money as desired.

Winning a lottery is a matter of luck and probability. Factors like the quantity of numbers you have to match from a total selection of available numbers, the numbers of times a lottery is held, the number of multiple winners possible from a lottery and so on play an important role in determining your chances of winning something substantial. All lotteries are designed by financial experts whose challenge is to make the lottery as attractive as possible. Lotteries usually give you the jackpot when you have matched all the numbers on your form with the winning numbers drawn. If you have only a few of the winning numbers on your form you may be given a smaller prize.

For example, some lotteries make playing very attractive by keeping the form value as low as a euro. Your chances of winning are also greater when some lotteries select about 15-17 numbers as the winning numbers, but you have to have only5-7 of those winning numbers on your form to win. Having any5-7 of the winning 15-17 numbers creates multiple winners and increases the chances of your win. The icing on the cake is, you can select the same numbers on multiple forms and multiply your chances of winning as many times as you like. If lesser than 5-7 numbers match on your form with the winning numbers you can get smaller cash prizes.

This lottery format has therefore become very popular as you experience being a winner more times with minimum amount of investment risk. This is the very reason that people of all age groups prefer to play the lottery rather than increasing their risk at betting.

The payment on lottery winnings is usually made by a onetime payment or can be split into annuity payments. The winner is also expected to respect the laws of the land and pay taxes accordingly. Online lottery sites pay their winners through their insurance firms and give the option of accepting a lump sum or a breakup of the amount in a few installments.

Always ensure that you play your lottery through a legitimate source like an authentic and credible lottery and gaming website or through government backed lotteries to avoid being cheated.

These games involve:

a large spherical or prolate spheroid ball, which is itself called a football.

a team scoring goals and/or points, by moving the ball to an opposing team’s end of the field and either into a goal area, or over a line.

the goal and/or line being defended by the opposing team.

players being required to move the ball mostly by kicking and — in some codes — carrying and/or passing the ball by hand.

goals and/or points resulting from players putting the ball between two goalposts.

offside rules, in most codes, restricting the movement of players.

in some codes, points are mostly scored by players carrying the ball across the goal line.

in most codes players scoring a goal must put the ball either under or over a crossbar between the goalposts.

players in some codes receiving a free kick after they take a mark/make a fair catch.

Many of the modern games have their origins in England, but many peoples around the world have played games which involved kicking and/or carrying a ball since ancient timesWhile it is widely believed that the word “football” (or “foot ball”) originated in reference to the action of a foot kicking a ball, there is a rival explanation, which has it that football originally referred to a variety of games in medieval Europe, which were played on foot.[1] These games were usually played by peasants, as opposed to the horse-riding sports often played by aristocrats. While there is no conclusive evidence for this explanation, the word football has always implied a variety of games played on foot, not just those that involved kicking a ball. In some cases, the word football has even been applied to games which have specifically outlawed kicking the ball

Throughout the history of mankind, the urge to kick at stones and other such objects is thought to have led to many early activities involving kicking and/or running with a ball. Football-like games predate recorded history in all parts of the world, and thus the earliest forms of football are not knownDocumented evidence of what is possibly the oldest activity resembling football can be found in a Chinese military manual written during the Warring States Period in about the 476 BC-221 BC. It describes a practice known as cuju, which involved kicking a leather ball through a hole in a piece of silk cloth strung between two 30 foot poles.

Kemari being played at the Tanzan Shrine, Sakurai, Japan.Another Asian ball-kicking game, which was influenced by cuju, is kemari. This is known to have been played within the Japanese imperial court in Kyoto from about 600 AD. In kemari several people stand in a circle and kick a ball to each other, trying not to let the ball drop to the ground (much like keepie uppie). The game appears to have died out sometime before the mid-19th century. (It was revived in 1903, and it can now be seen played for the benefit of tourists at a number of festivals.)

Mesoamerican ballgames played with rubber balls are also well-documented as existing since before this time, but these had more similarities to basketball or volleyball, and since their influence on modern football games is minimal, most do not class them as football.

The Ancient Greeks and Romans are known to have played many ball games some of which involved the use of the feet. The Roman writer Cicero describes the case of a man who was killed whilst having a shave when a ball was kicked into a barber’s shop. The Roman game harpastum is believed to have been adapted from a team game known as “επισκυρος” (episkyros) or pheninda that is mentioned by Greek playwright, Antiphanes (388-311BC) and later referred to by Clement of Alexandria. These games appears to have resembled rugby.

There are a number of references to traditional, ancient, and/or prehistoric ball games, played by indigenous peoples in many different parts of the world. For example, in 1586, men from a ship commanded by an English explorer named John Davis, went ashore to play a form of football with Inuit (Eskimo) people in Greenland.[2] There are later accounts of an Inuit game played on ice, called Aqsaqtuk. Each match began with two teams facing each other in parallel lines, before attempting to kick the ball through each other team’s line and then at a goal. In 1610, William Strachey of the Jamestown settlement, Virginia recorded a game played by Native Americans, called Pahsaheman. In Victoria, Australia, indigenous people played a game called Marn Grook (“ball game”). An 1878 book by Robert Brough-Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria, quotes a man called Richard Thomas as saying, in about 1841, that he had witnessed Aboriginal people playing the game: “Mr Thomas describes how the foremost player will drop kick a ball made from the skin of a possum and how other players leap into the air in order to catch it.” It is widely believed that Marn Grook had an influence on the development of Australian rules football (see below).

These games and others may well go far back into antiquity and may have influenced later football games. However, the main sources of modern football codes appear to lie in western Europe, especially England.

The Middle Ages saw a huge rise in popularity of annual Shrovetide football matches throughout Europe, particularly in England. The game played in England at this time may have arrived with the Roman occupation, but there is little evidence to indicate this. Reports of a game played in Brittany, Normandy, and Picardy, known as La Soule or Choule, suggest that some of these football games could have arrived in England as a result of the Norman Conquest.

An illustration of mob football.These archaic forms of football, typically classified as “mob football”, would be played between neighbouring towns and villages, involving an unlimited number of players on opposing teams, who would clash in a heaving mass of people struggling to drag an inflated pig’s bladder by any means possible to markers at each end of a town (sometimes instead of markers, the teams would attempt to kick the bladder into the balcony of the opponents’ church). There is no evidence to support the legend that these games in England evolved from a more ancient and bloody ritual of kicking the “Dane’s head”. Shrovetide games have survived into the modern era in a number of English towns (see below).

The first detailed description of football in England was given by William FitzStephen in about 1174-1183. He described the activities of London youths during the annual festival of Shrove Tuesday:

After lunch all the youth of the city go out into the fields to take part in a ball game. The students of each school have their own ball; the workers from each city craft are also carrying their balls. Older citizens, fathers, and wealthy citizens come on horseback to watch their juniors competing, and to relive their own youth vicariously: you can see their inner passions aroused as they watch the action and get caught up in the fun being had by the carefree adolescents.[3]

Most of the very early references to the game speak simply of “ball play” or “playing at ball”. This reinforces the idea that the games played at the time did not necessarily involve a ball being kicked.

In 1314 , Nicholas de Farndone, Lord Mayor of London issued a decree banning football (in the French used by the English upper classes at the time. A translation reads: “[f]orasmuch as there is great noise in the city caused by hustling over large foot balls [rageries de grosses pelotes de pee] in the fields of the public from which many evils might arise which God forbid: we command and forbid on behalf of the king, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in the future.” This is the earliest reference to football.

The earliest mention of a ball game that involves kicking was in 1321, in Shouldham, Norfolk: “[d]uring the game at ball as he kicked the ball, a lay friend of his… ran against him and wounded himself”.[4].

In 1363, King Edward III of England issued a proclamation banning “…handball, football, or hockey; coursing and cock-fighting, or other such idle games”, showing that “football” — whatever its exact form in this case — was being differentiated from games involving other parts of the body, such as handball.

King Henry IV of England gives the earliest documented use of the English word “football”, in 1409, when he issued a proclamation forbidding the levying of money for “foteball”.[5]

There is also an account in Latin from the end of the 15th century of football being played at Cawston, Nottinghamshire. This is the first description of a “kicking game” and the first description of dribbling: “[t]he game at which they had met for common recreation is called by some the foot-ball game. It is one in which young men, in country sport, propel a huge ball not by throwing it into the air but by striking it and rolling it along the ground, and that not with their hands but with their feet… kicking in opposite directions” The chronicler gives the earliest reference to a football field, stating that: “[t]he boundaries have been marked and the game had started.[6]

Other firsts in the mediæval and early modern eras:

“a football”, in the sense of a ball rather than a game, was first mentioned in 1486.[7] This reference is in Dame Juliana Berners’ Book of St Albans. It states: “a certain rounde instrument to play with …it is an instrument for the foote and then it is calde in Latyn ‘pila pedalis’, a fotebal.” [8]

a pair of football boots was ordered by King Henry VIII of England in 1526. [9]

women playing a form of football was in 1580, when Sir Philip Sidney described it in one of his poems: “[a] tyme there is for all, my mother often sayes, When she, with skirts tuckt very hy, with girles at football playes.”[10]

the first references to goals are in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In 1584 and 1602 respectively, John Norden and Richard Carew referred to “goals” in Cornish hurling. Carew described how goals were made: “they pitch two bushes in the ground, some eight or ten foote asunder; and directly against them, ten or twelue [twelve] score off, other twayne in like distance, which they terme their Goales”.[11] He is also the first to describe goalkeepers and passing of the ball between players.

the first direct reference to scoring a goal is in John Day’s play The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (performed circa 1600; published 1659): “I’ll play a gole at camp-ball” (an extremely violent variety of football, which was popular in East Anglia). Similarly in a poem in 1613, Michael Drayton refers to “when the Ball to throw, And drive it to the Gole, in squadrons forth they goe”. The word “football”, when used in reference to a specific game can mean any one of those described above. Because of this, much friendly controversy has occurred over the term football, primarily because it is used in different ways in different parts of the English-speaking world. Most often, the word “football” is used to refer to the code of football that is considered dominant within a particular region.

Globally, and not necessarily in native English speaking countries, the word “football” usually refers to association football as this is the most widely played code of football. The name “soccer” (or “soccer football”) was originally a slang abbreviation of association football and is now the prevailing term in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand where other codes of football are dominant.

Of the 45 national FIFA affiliates in which English is an official or primary language, only three (Canada, Samoa and the United States) actually use “soccer” in their organizations’ official names, while the rest use football (although the Samoan Federation actually uses both). However, in some countries, such as Australia and New Zealand, use of the word “football” by soccer bodies is a recent change and has been controversial.

The casino games slot machines are the kinds of games, which are often be played by the people in the casinos. This game is very easy, you will need some coins that you can get in the casinos by changing some money, and sit in the front of any slot machine and push some buttons with your luck. There are many chances, which you can hope to win the money by playing the slot machine.

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The game of Rugby has a superb history that is steeped in customs of the ages.  Rough and tumble games involving multiple players on each side fighting to get possession of a ball made from a pig’s bladder stuffed with air and transport it to a marker at one end of a patch of ground can be traced into the middle ages.  Frequently these games have Celtic and Viking origins.  Otherwise, they can be traced back to the Romans.  However , these games came to be, we do know that the folks of Britain had a passion for playing them.  

There wasn’t any formal set of rules to regularize these games.  Instead, the local players were known to make up there own rules on the spot.  Because these games were so coarse and people were so regularly hurt, maimed or even rubbed out in the playing of them, the law began taking measures to outlaw the playing of such games.  

The laws went as far as to make it illegal to play on public roads or public lands.  The laws did not discourage people from collaborating in sporting events.  It just meant that the games were moved from public lands to personal lands.  College became popular venues for such sports events because they had massive enough tracts of land for playing, and because giant numbers of boys and younger guys were picked up there.  

The classic story that has been passed down through generations is that in the year 1823 at a Brit college in the town of Rugby, a young man named William Webb Ellis was engaged in playing a game with his school pals.  At a critical moment in the game, he showed utter disregard for the guidelines and picked the ball up and ran with it across the field, scoring a point for his team.  

This story, though very hip, is most probably not completely true.  There isn’t any real evidence to support the story, but Rugby players love the story and so it has lived on.  In fact, there’s an en-graven stone at Rugby which carries the message located at the start of this article.  What’s fact is that William Webb Ellis did attend Rugby college at roughly the time Rugby turned into a distinguishable game.  And the origins of the game can be traced to the school in Rugby, thus the name Rugby was given to the game.  

By the 1840′s the game had gained renown, and Rugby clubs began to spring up across the land.  However , there were still no standardised rules, and each club played by their own rules.  In January of 1871, a meeting was held in which delegates from all 22 Rugby clubs were in attendance.  In this meeting the Rugby soccer Union was set up and a delegation was selected to create a standard set of rules.  The guidelines were introduced by June 1871, and the official sport of Rugby was born.  

In the 1890′s the division between commercial classes split the Rugby union in 2.  This break slowed the progression of Rugby Football for nearly a century.  In that time Rugby continued to be played in clubs around Europe, Australia and New Zealand, but other games which also sprang from the seeds of those medieval sports played with an inflated pig’s bladder,eg American football and soccer moved into the forefront.  Today, Rugby is making a comeback.  Latterly, members of the world Olympic council voted to include Rugby Sevens as an official sport in the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Here are some of the valuable features to be kept in mind before buying football kits:
o Looks: One of the most prominent factors related to the football kit is the way it looks. Studies have proved that players wearing well-fitted football kits perform better in the game. That is why it is paramount for players to go for good football kits so that they can perform in the most desired manner.
o Fabric: The next attribute that needs your careful attention is the fabric used in the football kits. It is highly recommended to choose fabrics that are resilient in nature so that when playing, if the fabric gets stretched, the person wearing it does not feel uncomfortable.
o Durability: The next feature you must look for in the kit is the durability factor. Durable football kits will last for more than one season and has adequate sheen to glide on turf during tackle. It should be comfortable enough to wear so that you can adequately enjoy the game.

Choose from Online Football Kit Shops

There are online football kit shops available that provide numerous varieties and categories of football kits, such as national teams, English teams, Greek teams, Dutch teams, Spanish teams, Argentinean teams, Brazilian teams, Italian teams, 08-09 jerseys and Portuguese teams to name but a few.

Quality benefits of Online Shopping

The biggest advantage attached to these online shops is that they cater to the needs, as well as the requirements, of the customer in the most appropriate ways. Following are some of the benefits given to the customers:
o The online shops are 24/7 available and accessible. This largely helps when buying the football kit as per one’s convenience.
o The online football kit shops provide a large variety of kits to choose from. This way the shops have something in store for all customers.
o The online kit shops are for the official merchandise and that is why they deliver the orders direct to the customers’ doorsteps. This greatly adds to the convenience and comfort factor of their clients.
o If you want to get the name of a player or number imprinted on the kit, these shops offer this service free of charge. Also, customers can get the kits personalized as per their choice. Through this facility, the customers get to enjoy the factor of flexibility in a big way.

Take advantage of the services of these online football kit shops and get the personalized football kits of your choice so that you can play the game of football and experience victory. Happy buying!