The North East Australian Football League (NEAFL) was an Australian rules football league in New South Wales, Queensland, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory. The league was formed in November 2010, and its inaugural competition was in 2011. It was a second division league, sitting below the national Australian Football League (AFL) and featured the reserves teams of the region's four AFL clubs playing alongside six non-AFL affiliated NEAFL senior teams. Nine NEAFL seasons were contested between 2011 and 2019, before the 2020 season was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the league was amalgamated into the Victorian Football League from 2021. History The NEAFL was formed at the end of 2010 primarily as an amalgamation of the two major football leagues in Australia's north-east - the Queensland Australian Football League, based in South-East Queensland and including one team from the Northern Territory, and AFL Canberra, based around ACT, and including one team from Sydney (the reserves team of the AFL's Sydney Swans). The two leagues were converted to NEAFL conferences: the Northern Conference, serving Queensland and the Northern Territory, and the Eastern Conference, serving New South Wales and the ACT. Teams from the two conferences played matches against each other throughout the home-and-away season, before each conference staged a separate finals competition to determine both a northern premier and an eastern premier. The two premiers then played each other in the NEAFL Grand Final. Two new teams also joined the competition for its inaugural season in 2011: the reserves team of Gold Coast Football Club (whose senior team joined the AFL in the same season); and the senior team of the Greater Western Sydney Giants, which was preparing to join the AFL in 2012. These two clubs would have joined the QAFL and AFL Canberra respectively, had the NEAFL not been formed. In 2012, two more clubs joined the Eastern Conference from the AFL Sydney competition: Sydney Hills and Sydney University. With 's senior team joining the AFL, its NEAFL side became a reserves team in partnership with, and under the name of the University of Western Sydney. On 11 May 2013, the NEAFL Northern Conference played an interstate game against South Australia who represent the South Australian National Football League (SANFL). The game, played at the City Mazda Stadium in Adelaide resulted in a 21.14 (140) to 9.4 (58) win over the NEAFL North, with