McClelland Trophy

The McClelland Trophy is an Australian rules football club championship trophy, awarded each year to the club with the best aggregate performance across the Australian Football League (AFL) and AFL Women's (AFLW) home-and-away seasons.^[1]

The trophy was inaugurated in 1951. From 1951 to 1990, it was a club championship award presented to the club with the highest aggregate performance across the three grades of competition that were sanctioned by the VFL/AFL - seniors, reserves, and under-19s - with senior wins carrying a higher value.

By 1991, three interstate clubs had joined the AFL seniors without competing in the minor grades: after the AFL announced that the under-19s competition was to be shut down at the end of that season, the club championship format was discontinued.^[2] From 1991 to 2022, the trophy was presented to the minor premiers, i.e. the club that finished the AFL home-and-away season on top of the ladder.

In 2022, the expansion of the AFL Women's competition meant that all AFL clubs now fielded a men's and a women's team. Thus, from 2023, the club championship format returned, using the men's and women's seasons: both seasons were given roughly equal weightings overall, with each match in the shorter women's season having a higher weighting than each match in the longer men's season. The trophy now includes $1 million in prize money, to be shared equally between the club and its AFL and AFLW players.

Teams that win the trophy are given a simplified replica of the middle panel of the perpetual trophy, which features the AFL lettering and a round die-cast of McClelland.