The 1990 Australian Football League season was the 94th season of the elite Australian rules football competition, and the first under the name 'Australian Football League', having switched from 'Victorian Football League' after 1989.
Essendon defeated North Melbourne 17.10 (112) to 10.16 (76)
All teams played 22 games during the home and away season, for a total of 154. An additional 7 games were played during the finals series.
Grand Final
This was Collingwood's 14th VFL/AFL premiership, ending 32 years of heartbreak as the Magpies had lost each of the eight Grand Finals it had contested since it won the 1958 Grand Final (it had also drawn the 1977 VFL Grand Final then lost the replay the following week).
Total match attendance for the home-and-away season was 3,587,595 people. Total attendance for the finals series was 475,790 people.
The Brownlow Medal was awarded to Tony Liberatore of Footscray.
The Coleman Medal was awarded to John Longmire of North Melbourne.
The Norm Smith Medal was awarded to Tony Shaw of Collingwood
The Leigh Matthews Trophy was awarded to Darren Millane of Collingwood
The Wooden Spoon was "awarded" to the Brisbane Bears
Carlton won the reserves premiership. Carlton 14.14 (98) defeated Melbourne 11.15 (81) in the Grand Final, held as a curtain-raiser to the seniors Grand Final on 6 October at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
The Victorian Football League (VFL) was renamed and re-badged (with a new logo) as the Australian Football League in 1990.
VFL Park was re-designated as Waverley Park (although it took about two or three years for football commentators and sporting editors to relinquish the usage of the old name for the ground).
By the AFL rules at the time, the drawn qualifying final between Collingwood and West Coast was replayed on the following weekend. This meant that minor premier Essendon was given a second consecutive bye week, giving them three weeks between games; Essendon ultimately reached the Grand Final through the Preliminary Final, but they were soundly beaten in both the Second Semi-Final and Grand Final, to which many laid partial blame upon the extended layoff. Additionally, the delay caused scheduling chaos for venues and hotels as a large number of league and corporate events related to the finals, and particularly to Grand Final week, had to be rescheduled; the extent of this was unprecedented, as the number and scale of such events had increased significantly since the last finals draw in 1977. The AFL went on to introduce the provision to play extra time in tied finals matches (except the Grand Final) in future years to prevent a repeat of this.
The Port Adelaide Football Club from the South Australian National Football League made a bid to join the new AFL competition; the application was rejected, and a composite South Australian National Football League team, christened the "Adelaide Crows" was admitted to the AFL competition in the 1991 season.
The Brisbane-Melbourne game in Round 5 was the 10,000th VFL/AFL match.
