Essendon Football Club

The Essendon Football Club, nicknamed the Bombers or colloquially the Dons, is a professional Australian rules football club that plays in the Australian Football League. It was formed by the McCracken family in their Ascot Vale home in 1872, played its first recorded game in 1873, and from 1878 until 1896 competed in the Victorian Football Association, where it won four consecutive premierships between 1891 and 1894. In 1896 it joined seven other clubs to form the breakaway Victorian Football League and won the inaugural premiership in 1897. Essendon has won 16 VFL and AFL premierships, tied with Carlton and Collingwood for the most of any club. It had golden eras under Dick Reynolds in the 1940s and 1950s and under Kevin Sheedy from the 1980s to the early 2000s, and it plays the annual Anzac Day clash with Collingwood and Dreamtime at the G with Richmond.