Three major factors between 1986 and 1991 led to the end of this traditional arrangement in Victoria: As a result of these issues, the AFL agreed to relinquish direct control of the Victorian Reserves competition to the newly formed Victorian State Football League at the end of the 1991 season - this also saw the AFL cease to be the governing body for football in Victoria after 95 years - with the Under-19s competition and the twelve participating AFL clubs' Under-19s teams being shut down, to be replaced by the TAC Cup which featured six unaffiliated district-based Under-18s clubs.
This rule was abolished in 2011 after more AFL clubs decided to field stand-alone Reserves teams in the VFL.
[19] In 2015, Port Adelaide fielded an academy team of father-son selections and international and interstate scholarship holders in the SANFL Reserves competition, as well as shutting down its traditional junior grade teams and surrendering its SANFL recruiting zones.
[28] In New South Wales and Queensland, all four AFL clubs field stand-alone reserves teams in the Victorian Football League.
Starting in around 2011, there was considerable interest by many AFL clubs in abandoning league affiliations or host-club arrangements to form stand-alone reserves teams.
A large contributing factor to this interest was the perception that the developmental autonomy Geelong and Collingwood enjoyed as the only two clubs fielding stand-alone reserves teams in the VFL was responsible for the very strong senior AFL performances of those two clubs between 2007 and 2011, during which time they won four of the five AFL premierships.
[14] This represented a shift from the prevailing thinking of the 1990s when the affiliations were arranged: at that time, particularly during the early 1990s recession, many clubs' finances were tight, so operating costs drove many decisions.
[41] In South Australia and Western Australia, the debate became more heated than in Victoria: the league affiliation system primarily benefited the state leagues, by helping to ensure that none of their clubs gained an undue advantage through preferential access to professional AFL-listed players, and by helping to minimise the drain of talent from the league, but this was to the detriment of player development at the AFL clubs, since reserves players end up playing for a variety of different teams, under a variety of different game-plans, and not necessarily in the positions that the AFL clubs would prefer.
As early as 1988 - the West Coast Eagles' second season in the VFL/AFL - senior coach John Todd proposed that the Eagles enter a team in the VFL Reserves competition, but the West Australian Football Commission point-blank rejected his proposal.
[26][43][44] In Western Australia, a wide range of compromise solutions was proposed, including stand-alone reserves teams playing the WAFL clubs in a separate competition during their WAFL bye weeks,[45] a new secondary league including reserves teams from the Western Australian and South Australian AFL clubs,[46] or a return to host-club arrangements.
However, with the reversal of Norwood's publicly stated opposition to AFL stand-alone involvement, the SANFL gained the constitutionally required two-thirds majority support in August 2013.
This desire led to an impasse, as the South Australian Football Commission required that Port Adelaide shut down its Under-18s and Under-16s teams and surrender its SANFL recruiting zones, thereby severing its connection with the community, in order to continue with this arrangement, which the club was highly reluctant to do.
In 2020, AFL-listed players were not permitted to compete in state-level football in any capacity due to the requirements of the quarantine bubbles set up to complete the 2020 AFL season amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2017 the AFL Women's (AFLW) competition was launched, with semi-professional female footballers gaining the opportunity to compete in a national league.