Australasian Football Council 1914 Gold Medallion

Australasian Football Council - 1914, Gold (15c) medallion showing inlaid enamel Australian States and New Zealand in different colours on the obverse, the reverse engraved with 'Australasian Football Council 1914 / Wm. Strickland, Esq Hon. Life Member. Provenance: The family, by descent. The Australian National Football Council (ANFC) was the national governing body for Australian Rules Football in Australia from 1906 until 1995. The council was a body of delegates representing each of the sport's individual state leagues which controlled football in their states. The council was the owner of the laws of the game and managed interstate administrative and football matters. Its function was superseded by the AFL Commission. The council underwent several name changes during its existence, and at different times it was also known as: The Australasian Football Council (1906?1919), the Australian Football Council (1920?1927 and 1973?1975), the National Football League (NFL) (1975?1989) and the National Australian Football Council (NAFC) (1989?1995). The Australasian Football Council was formally established in 1906, with its inaugural meeting taking place at the Port Phillip Hotel in Melbourne on 7 November 1906. The council's initial structure was that each state and New Zealand would have two delegates who would discuss and vote on matters. The decision to appoint two delegates was to allow states which had more than one main league to be represented separately by each, resulting in each being a controlling body for a different region of their state. Among its first orders of business, the Council arranged for the first Interstate Carnival to be held in Melbourne in 1908. Teams representing each state and New Zealand played several matches over a two-week period in August 1908, with Victoria emerging unbeaten as the champion state. Considered a great success, interstate carnivals were held approximately triennially (except during periods of war) until the 1970s, and were the main on-field events for which the council was directly responsible. In 1914, the year Strickland was made an Honorary Life Member, the Council held a conference with the New South Wales Rugby League, at which preliminary plans were drawn up for a hybrid between Rugby League and Australian Rules Football to be known as 'universal football'. It was thought that amalgamating with rugby league, rather than trying to supplant it, could be a more effective way to create a nationally popular sport which incorporated the best features of Australian rules football. Progress was made, but the escalation in 1915 of World War I put any efforts to amalgamate on hold, interest in the amalgamation waned after the war and efforts were not revived.