FEATURED PROJECTS

AUSTRALIAN FOOTBALL'S FORGOTTEN PAST

Hard Ball Get aims to provide the history and statistics you won't find anywhere else – complete, correct and all in one place – so we have a reference point to work from as we look to the future. Our specific focus points are interstate and representative football, state leagues, neglected VFL/AFL history, and mythbusting.

All of this matters because the focus in Australian football, understandably, is on today and tomorrow. Players, coaches, recruiters – none of them can rest on what they have achieved in the past; one eye is always on the future. Unfortunately, this obsession with new action has meant that many significant achievements in Australian football have been recorded inaccurately or completely overlooked. Mistakes went unchecked; memories and vague recollections were allowed to become historical facts.

As a result, much of the information found today in print and online is fragmented, twisted or missing key details to the point where anyone seeking a complete picture of what happened over the past 160-plus years is often left with a jigsaw that seemingly cannot be solved. John Devaney's former website Full Points Footy (now mostly absorbed into AustralianFootball.com) made massive in-roads into righting this wrong; we at Hard Ball Get aim to continue that great work.

MISSING INFORMATION – CAN YOU HELP?

After exhaustive research, some gaps still remain. We are currently prioritising the discovery of a number of early VFA leading goalkickers and representative captains/coaches.
​To see our list of missing information, click the button below. If you can help out with any answers, please use the contact form on the right to send us a tip.

LATEST UPDATES

25 Oct. 2020: Grand Final Sprint updated (2020 field, results and video added)

27 Feb 2020: match results from over  1000 representative / interstate matches uploaded, covering seasons 1877-1949, with many more to come!

26 Oct 2019: a new article from Matt Gibbs explores the history of the VFL/AFL Reserves Best & Fairest award, the GARDINER MEDAL.

This includes the top 3 placegetters and their vote tallies and, remarkably, the story of four retrospective medals that should have been presented by the AFL in 1992... but were overlooked!

6 Oct 2019: VFA/VFL season 2019 updates added:
- 2019 Grand Final details
- 2019 Medallists
- Finals Records
- Premiership Captains/Coaches

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