[2] In a preview of the 1940 SANFL Lightning Carnival, the Advertiser journalist Jim Handby discussed the suitability of the name; while he surmised that the choice of name was primarily due to the short time over which the premiership was decided, he speculated that the shortened matches could lead to a particularly high-paced style of gameplay.
In more recent incarnations of lightning football organised by the AFL, several experimental rules, many designed to speed up the game, have been trialled.
The most notable variation was the introduction of a free kick paid against the last player to touch the ball before it goes out of bounds (except a spoil or smother), rather than restarting play with a boundary throw-in; this rule was used in the AFL's 1996 and 2011 lightning matches,[5] and as revised in 2012 to penalise a player only if the last touch was a kick, handpass, or crossing the line while in possession of the ball.
[8] The Victorian Football League then staged its version, known as the "Patriotic Premiership", on 3 August 1940, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, attracting more than 30,000 people, and won by St Kilda; this was a twelve-team knock-out tournament, with each match lasting a single period of 20 minutes.
Most notably, the Broken Hill Football League, staged a "Patriotic Premiership" on 6 July 1940, one week before the inaugural SANFL event, which consisted of a four-team knock-out tournament, with matches played at just under half-length (two periods of twenty minutes without time-on).
[11] In the ten years following World War II, most of the major Australian rules football leagues sporadically held lightning premierships.