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Lightning football is a shortened variation of
Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...
, often played at half of the duration of a full match. Lightning football is typically used as a means to accommodate a small tournament inside a single day or weekend, particularly at junior or amateur level; these tournaments are generally known as lightning premierships or lightning carnivals. At the top level of Australian rules football, lightning matches have most recently been staged as part of the
Australian Football League pre-season competition In the Australian Football League (AFL), previously the Victorian Football League (VFL), the pre-season competition, known during its history by a variety of sponsored names and most recently as the NAB Cup, was an annual Australian rules footba ...
. Lightning football is distinct from
AFLX AFLX is a variation of Australian rules football designed in 2017 to be played on a football pitch (significantly smaller than the Australian rules football playing field), unlike the full 18-a-side game or the established variant for rectang ...
, a different shortened variation of Australian rules football. Lightning football is not significantly different from standard Australian rules football other than the length of its games, while AFLX is a heavily modified variant played with on a smaller field with fewer players.


Name

The use of the word ''lightning'', as a synonym for "fast", to describe an Australian rules football tournament appears to have originated with the first lightning carnival staged by the
South Australian National Football League The South Australian National Football League, or SANFL ( or ''S-A-N-F-L''), is an Australian rules football league based in the Australian state of South Australia. It is also the state's governing body for the sport. Originally formed as the ...
(SANFL) in 1940. The term may have been adopted from its use in
chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...
, which had used the word ''lightning'' in the same context for many years: " lightning chess" tournaments were seen in Australia from as early as 1909, and were played under modified rules in which players were allowed at most ten seconds to make each move, allowing an entire tournament to be completed in just a few hours. In a preview of the 1940 SANFL Lightning Carnival, '' the Advertiser'' journalist Jim Handby discussed the suitability of the name; while he surmised that the choice of name was primarily due to the short time over which the premiership was decided, he speculated that the shortened matches could lead to a particularly high-paced style of gameplay. The term "lightning premiership/carnival" has generally entered the Australian vernacular for a condensed carnival of shortened matches in any game or sport. The term was, for example, attributed to a 1945 South Australian seven-a-side rugby union tournament, long before the sport of rugby sevens was formally codified.


Rules

Unlike other abbreviated sports, such as
Twenty20 cricket Twenty20 (T20) is a shortened game format of cricket. At the professional level, it was introduced by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) in 2003 for the inter-county competition. In a Twenty20 game, the two teams have a single inning ...
, rugby sevens or Australian rules football's
AFLX AFLX is a variation of Australian rules football designed in 2017 to be played on a football pitch (significantly smaller than the Australian rules football playing field), unlike the full 18-a-side game or the established variant for rectang ...
, lightning football is not a strictly codified sport in its own right. In many cases, the length of the game is the only difference in the rules between the full and lightning versions of the game; in other cases, some rules are modified for lightning matches. Most commonly, lightning matches are played at half of the length of a regulation game. In the most recent lightning matches in the Australian Football League (AFL) pre-season competition, lightning matches are played over two halves, each lasting 20 minutes with time on, compared with the normal match length of four quarters each lasting 20 minutes with time-on. However, this varies from tournament to tournament, and the length is often simply adjusted based on the number of games required to be played and the time available to play them in. In more recent incarnations of lightning football organised by the AFL, several experimental rules, many designed to speed up the game, have been trialled. The most notable variation was the introduction of a free kick paid against the last player to touch the ball before it goes out of bounds (except from a spoil or smother), rather than restarting play with a boundary throw-in; this rule was used in the AFL's
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and
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lightning matches, and as revised in
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to penalise a player only if the last touch was a kick, handpass, or crossing the line while in possession of the ball.


History


Early history

The concept of holding a one-day tournament of shortened Australian rules football matches dates as early as the 19th century. During a weekend's break in the 1896 VFA premiership season, a
Charity Cup The Charity Cup (known as the ASB Charity Cup for sponsorship reasons) is New Zealand's association football super cup, which takes place on annual basis. The competition was founded in 1978 as the NZFA Challenge Trophy. The Champions of the ...
event was held in which four clubs – , , and
Port Melbourne Port Melbourne is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, south-west of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the Cities of Melbourne and Port Phillip local government areas. Port Melbourne recorded a populatio ...
– contested a knock-out tournament of shortened matches; as is the case in modern lightning premierships, new rules were trialled during the event.


World War II

Lightning premierships saw an increase in frequency around World War II, when many such events were staged as wartime fundraisers. The first occurred during 1940, the first football season following the outbreak of World War II. On 13 July 1940, the SANFL staged its "Lightning Football Carnival" at the
Adelaide Oval Adelaide Oval is a sports ground in Adelaide, South Australia, located in the parklands between the city centre and North Adelaide. The venue is predominantly used for cricket and Australian rules football, but has also played host to rugby ...
, attracting a crowd of almost 17,500 people, with Sturt victorious; the carnival was an eight-team knock-out tournament, with each match played over two periods of 14 minutes each. The
Victorian Football League The Victorian Football League (VFL) is an Australian rules football league in Australia serving as one of the second-tier regional semi-professional competitions which sit underneath the fully professional Australian Football League (AFL). It ...
then staged its version, known as the "Patriotic Premiership", on 3 August 1940, at the
Melbourne Cricket Ground The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), also known locally as "The 'G", is an Australian sports stadium located in Yarra Park, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Victoria. Founded and managed by the Melbourne Cricket Club, it is the largest stadiu ...
, attracting more than 30,000 people, and won by ; this was a twelve-team knock-out tournament, with each match lasting a single period of 20 minutes. Both tournaments were considered great successes, and both leagues held further wartime Lightning Premierships in 1941 and 1943. In addition to the sport's two biggest leagues, the Tasmanian Australian National Football League (TANFL) held two wartime Lightning Premierships, both in 1941, and many smaller leagues also held events. Most notably, the
Broken Hill Football League The AFL Broken Hill (formerly, Broken Hill Football League) is an Australian rules football competition based in the Broken Hill region of New South Wales, Australia. Although located in the state of New South Wales the league is an affiliated m ...
, staged a "Patriotic Premiership" on 6 July 1940, one week before the inaugural SANFL event, which consisted of a four-team knock-out tournament, with matches played at just under half-length (two periods of twenty minutes without time-on).


Post World War II

In the ten years following World War II, most of the major Australian rules football leagues sporadically held lightning premierships. Although there was no longer a war to fund, the events were still held as charity fundraisers. The SANFL was the most active proponent of lightning football, staging four post-war carnivals between 1946 and 1950; the VFL staged lightning premierships on public holidays in
1951 Events January * January 4 – Korean War: Third Battle of Seoul – Chinese and North Korean forces capture Seoul for the second time (having lost the Second Battle of Seoul in September 1950). * January 9 – The Government of the United ...
(Jubilee Day),
1952 Events January–February * January 26 – Black Saturday in Egypt: Rioters burn Cairo's central business district, targeting British and upper-class Egyptian businesses. * February 6 ** Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh, becomes m ...
(Empire Day) and
1953 Events January * January 6 – The Asian Socialist Conference opens in Rangoon, Burma. * January 12 – Estonian émigrés found a Estonian government-in-exile, government-in-exile in Oslo. * January 14 ** Marshal Josip Broz Tito i ...
(Coronation Day); and post-war lightning premierships were also staged by the
Victorian Football Association The Victorian Football League (VFL) is an Australian rules football league in Australia serving as one of the second-tier regional semi-professional competitions which sit underneath the fully professional Australian Football League (AFL). It ...
(1946), the
North Western Football Union The North West Football Union (NWFU) was an Australian rules football competition which ran from 1910 to 1986. In its time it was one of the three main leagues in Tasmania, with the Tasmanian Football League and Northern Tasmanian Football Asso ...
(1951) and the TANFL (1953). Since the 1950s, lightning football has been seen only occasionally at the top levels of the sport. Specific events have included: *
1971 * The year 1971 had three partial solar eclipses ( February 25, July 22 and August 20) and two total lunar eclipses (February 10, and August 6). The world population increased by 2.1% this year, the highest increase in history. Events Ja ...
: the Rothmans Channel 7 Cup, an eight-team knockout tournament of half-length games played over one weekend in October 1971. The tournament was staged in Perth as a testimonial to
Polly Farmer Graham Vivian "Polly" Farmer (10 March 1935 14 August 2019) was an Australian rules footballer who played for the Geelong Football Club in the Australian Football League, Victorian Football League (VFL) and the East Perth Football Club and We ...
, and featured four
West Australian Football League The West Australian Football League (WAFL) is an Australian rules football league based in Perth, Western Australia. The league currently consists of ten teams, which play each other in a 20-round season usually lasting from March to September, ...
teams and two teams each from the SANFL and VFL. *1972–1979: the VFA staged a post-season lightning premiership among teams from both divisions that failed to reach the finals. The shortened matches were played as curtain-raisers to the finals, rather than as a condensed tournament. *
1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A Centennial Olympic Park bombing, bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical Anti-abortion violence, anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 8 ...
: the AFL staged a pre-season lightning premiership over a weekend in February 1996 to celebrate the league's Centenary Season. Matches were played over two halves of 17.5 minutes duration, and this was the first Lightning Premiership to trial some of the more experimental rules currently associated with the lightning format. *
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to
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: the AFL staged lightning matches in the first round of the annual pre-season competition. The league's eighteen teams competed in six separate rounds robin of three teams each, with each set of three matches played consecutively at one venue. In 2011, the lightning round was used to eliminate ten of the eighteen teams from the competition; in 2012, the lightning matches counted as two of each team's four scheduled pre-season competition matches. *2011: at the
2011 Australian Football International Cup The 2011 Australian Football International Cup (or IC21) is the fourth edition of the Australian Football International Cup, an international Australian rules football competition run by the Australian Football League. It was contested between 1 ...
, a round of lightning matches (in the form of six rounds robin of three teams each) was staged at the start of the tournament, and the results were used to separate the twelve stronger countries and the six weaker countries into separate divisions for the remainder of the tournament.


Lightning football at lower levels

Among the more notable senior lightning football events around Australia are: *The Ngurratjuta Lightning Carnival, which has been held every year since the 1980s over the Easter long weekend in
Alice Springs Alice Springs ( aer, Mparntwe) is the third-largest town in the Northern Territory of Australia. Known as Stuart until 31 August 1933, the name Alice Springs was given by surveyor William Whitfield Mills after Alice, Lady Todd (''née'' Al ...
. The Ngurratjuta Lightning Carnival attracts teams from all over the Northern Territory, including from remote indigenous communities, and is the biggest football event in the
Red Centre Central Australia, also sometimes referred to as the Red Centre, is an inexactly defined region associated with the geographic centre of Australia. In its narrowest sense it describes a region that is limited to the town of Alice Springs and i ...
. *The Boag's Draught Pre-season Invitational, which is a pre-season lightning premiership played among the previous year's premiers from each of Greater Melbourne's eight metropolitan football leagues (the EFL, EDFL, GFL, NFL, RDFL, SFL,
VAFA The Victorian Amateur Football Association (VAFA) is the largest senior community Australian rules football competition in Victoria. It consists of seven senior men's and women's divisions ranging from Premier to Division 4. In addition there ...
and
WRFL WRFL, Lexington (Radio Free Lexington) is a 7900-watt college radio station that broadcasts live, 24 hours a day, from the University of Kentucky campus in Lexington, Kentucky. The station has broadcast continuously at 88.1 MHz on the FM ra ...
). First staged in 2011. Annual lightning carnivals have become common in many junior leagues and school competitions. This is not limited to Australian rules football, with many other sports contested under a lightning premiership format.


Top level lightning premiership winners

This table lists winners of stand-alone lightning premiership series played in the major Australian state leagues.


References

{{Team sports Variations of Australian rules football Australian rules football terminology Sports originating in Australia