This year is a momentous one for the AFL Record. On April 27, 1912—the first round of the Victorian Football League’s 16th season—the VFL published the first edition of what was then called The Football Record, corresponding with a season in which players carried numbers on their guernseys for the first time. The Record’s edict was succinctly announced in its editorial: “Fair play is bonnie play”.

To celebrate this year’s centenary, The Slattery Media Group, the official publisher of the AFL Record since 1995, is creating the ultimate collector’s edition of the Record— a 7,000 plus page reproduction of every Grand Final Record from Essendon’s triumph in 1912, to last year’s 244-page souvenir.

The collector’s edition will be published in a boxed set and is not just a wonderful collection of memorabilia, but provides a ‘photograph’ of the development of the Australian game of football from its formative years, to the monolith of today.