As a national sport, the AFL is always looking to expand into other countries and showcase its unique style of play to an untapped audience of hungry sports fans. London is usually the hotspot for these games, with a total of 15 pre-season or postseason matches being played in the United Kingdom.
Some games leave you scratching your head as to why they would match up certain teams to play there; I'm looking at you, London, 2005, Fremantle against West Coast.
With the next stop on the AFL's travel itinerary hoping to be India, I decided to have a look at some of the global games across the AFL's history and rank them.
I'll be basing the ranking on how exciting and close the games were, where they were played and the spectacle they brought.
4London, United Kingdom, 1999 - The Oval
Before its historic 2000 season, Essendon headed to London to take on Hawthorn in what became the second-closest exhibition game in AFL history. The London touch loses a bit of points, seeing as the AFL had already played 11 games before this one.
The game itself was electric as Mark Johnson wowed the crowd with his physical style of play and Stephen Milne booted four goals while on the Bombers' supplementary list.
Essendon kicked two to start the fourth and held the lead before two goals in a minute by Hawthorn gave the Bombers a scare. However, Essendon would survive and defeat its rivals by three points.
