The ‘Living Memory’ VFL/AFL Premiership Table

All AFL/VFL premierships matter. Those which happened during your lifetime probably matter more though. So what if we adjusted each team's premierships for the estimated percentage of today's people that were alive for it?

To do this, I’ve adjusted each team’s number of premierships according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ age distribution for persons in Australia. Some minor assumptions: I’ve taken zero years as 2022, and haven’t split out 100+ years, so anything before 1922 carries a weight of zero. (I also haven’t adjusted for memory formation in one’s younger years, and memory loss in one’s older years.)

As a guide, roughly 75% of today’s population were alive for premierships in the early-2000s, roughly 50% were alive for premierships in the mid-1980s, and roughly 25% were alive for premierships in the mid-1960s. (You could also get a similar result from just giving a weight of 1 to the most recent premiership, 0.99 to the next most recent, and so on.)

OK, here’s the lifetime adjusted VFL/AFL premiership tally:

No surprises with Hawthorn coming (clearly) out on top. They’ve won four premierships since 2008, and they won another eight premierships from 1971 to 1991. If the Hawks were as successful over their whole history in the league as they have been in the past 60-odd years they’d have twenty premierships.

Richmond coming second may be a slight surprise for those who remember their 1983 to 2016 premiership drought. But they have three premierships since 2017, which already puts them above many teams in terms of average lifetime flags, and their five premierships from 1967 to 1980 would still be remembered/were witnessed by a decent-sized minority of the current population.

Geelong are third, having won four premierships since 2007, and West Coast are sixth with four premierships since 1992. Between them sit Carlton and Essendon – neither of which have won a premiership for over twenty years – but from 1960 to 2000 the Blues won eight premierships and the Bombers won six, so they still have a significant proportion of their fanbases that have tasted lots of success.

Melbourne and Brisbane rank next, although through quite different ways. The Demons of course won a premiership very recently in 2021, so most of their fans have been alive for one premiership, but there’s a small portion of their fanbase that have seen up to seven premierships due to their golden run from 1955 to 1964. Brisbane meanwhile gets its ranking from three flags in a row, back in the early 2000s.

The rest are reasonably self-explanatory in that they have low overall premiership tallies… and then there’s Collingwood… The Magpies have fifteen premierships in all, ranking them second overall, but thirteen of them came before 1959. Even Pie supporters under the age of 30 would only have experienced at most the one premiership in 2010. They’re essentially similar to Melbourne in terms of flags won, but with a less recent premiership and one in the 1990s breaking up the drought. (I promise the motivation for this exercise wasn’t purely to ‘have a go’ at the Magpies – they still have a massive fanbase regardless. They’ve also been in the finals plenty over that period.) 

So there you go. Although those premiership cups from before you were born are still taking up space in the trophy cabinet, this adjusted tally may feel a little more 'real' in terms of the 'living memories' of the AFL's current fanbases.