2001 AFL season

Results and statistics for the Australian Football League season of 2001.

See List of Australian Football League premiers for a complete list.

AFL Draft

See 2001 AFL Draft for more information.

National Cup

Port Adelaide defeated Brisbane Lions 17.9 (111) to 3.8 (26) in the Final.

Premiership Season

Round 1 (season launch)

Round 2

Round 3 (Easter)

Round 4

Round 5 (ANZAC Day)

Round 6

Round 7 (Mother's Day)

Round 8

Round 9

Round 10

Round 11 (Queen's Birthday)

Round 12 (Split Round)

Round 13

Round 14

Round 15

Round 16

• This round is most notable as it included the match in which Essendon made a 69-point comeback against North Melbourne.

Round 17

Round 18

Round 19

Round 20

Round 21

Round 22

Ladder

All teams played 22 games during the home and away season, for a total of 176. An additional 9 games were played during the finals series.

Ladder progression

• Numbers highlighted in green indicate that the team finished the round inside the top 8.
• Numbers highlighted in blue indicates the team finished first on the ladder in that round.
• Numbers highlighted in red indicates the team finished in last place on the ladder in that round.

Final series

Qualifying and Elimination Finals (Father's Day)

Semi Finals

Preliminary Finals

Grand Final

Match attendance

Awards

• The Brownlow Medal was awarded to Jason Akermanis of the Brisbane Lions.
• The AFL Players Association MVP Award went to Andrew McLeod of Adelaide.
  • This was the last year for the award under this name; starting with the 2002 season, it would be renamed the "Leigh Matthews Trophy".
• The Coleman Medal was awarded to Matthew Lloyd of Essendon.
• The Norm Smith Medal was awarded to Shaun Hart of the Brisbane Lions.
• The AFL Rising Star award was awarded to Justin Koschitzke of St Kilda.

Notable events

• In their Round 16 match, Essendon trailed by 69 points 12 minutes into the second quarter against the Kangaroos, but recovered to record a high-scoring 12 point win. This presently stands as the largest ever comeback in a VFL/AFL game. Essendon would not beat the Kangaroos again until the first round of the 2008 season.
• Melbourne and Collingwood began its annual tradition of playing each other at the M.C.G. in a Melbourne home game on Queen's Birthday Holiday, as the only AFL match of the day. The teams had met on the King's or Queen's Birthday Holiday sporadically in the past (1950, 1958, 1961, 1964, 1975, 1977, 1983, 1993, 1996 and 1999) as one of several games played on the day, with the 1958 game's attendance of 99,346 still enduring as the highest crowd for a non-final, but this was the first season that the fixture became annual, and the second time (after 1996) that the game was the only one played on the day.
• The longest recorded quarter occurred during the Round 5 match between Hawthorn and the Western Bulldogs. The second quarter went for 40 minutes and 39 seconds.
• Fremantle lost their first 17 matches of the season in succession, the worst start to a season by any team in the AFL era (post-1990). Including a loss in the final round of the 2000 season, the Dockers' long losing streak stood at 18, well short of Sydney's 26 consecutive losses endured in 1992 to 1993. As well as this, they only won one game at home, which happened to be their final home match of the season.

References

• 2001 Season – AFL Tables