The club won its first AFL Premiership by defeating Essendon 15. 18 ( 108 ) to 12. 10 ( 82 ) in the 2001 AFL Grand Final.

Essendon has won 16 VFL / AFL premierships which, along with Carlton, is the most of any club in the AFL.

In 1891 Essendon won their first VFA premiership, which they repeated in 1892, 1893 and 1894.

Essendon won its first VFL premiership by winning the 1897 VFL finals series.

Essendon again won the premiership in 1901, defeating Collingwood in the Grand Final.

Having played at the East Melbourne Cricket Ground from 1882 to 1921, and having won four VFA premierships ( 1891 – 1894 ) and four VFL premierships ( 1897, 1901, 1911, ( 1912 ) whilst there, Essendon were looking for a new home, and were offered grounds at the current Royal Melbourne Showgrounds, at Victoria Park, at Arden St, North Melbourne, and the Essendon Cricket Ground.

In the five years immediately after the war, Essendon won 3 premierships ( 1946, 1949, 1950 ) and were runners up twice ( 1947, 1948 ).

Collingwood succumbed first as the Dons powered their way to an 82 point first semi final victory, and a fortnight later it was the turn of the North Melbourne Football Club as Essendon won the preliminary final a good deal more comfortably than the ultimate margin of 17 points suggested.

One of the few highlights for Essendon supporters during this time was when Graham Moss won the 1976 Brownlow Medal ; he was the only Bomber to do so in a 40-year span from 1953 – 1993.

In 1984, Essendon won the pre-season competition and completed the regular season on top of the ladder.

The teams met again in the 1985 Grand Final, which Essendon also won.

The team won the 1993 Grand Final against Carlton and that same year, Gavin Wanganeen won the Brownlow Medal, the first awarded to an Essendon player since 1976.

In 2000, Essendon won 20 consecutive matches before losing to the Western Bulldogs in round 21 and went on to win their 16th premiership, defeating and completing one of the most dominant single seasons in AFL / VFL history.

The defeat to the Bulldogs was the only defeat for Essendon throughout the entire calendar year ( Essendon also won the 2000 pre-season competition ).

Geelong has also won nine McClelland Trophies, a record it shares with Essendon.

Essendon won all three of its games, while Geelong lost to Essendon during this series.

Bob Davis acknowledges the possibility that had Coleman played, Essendon may well have won, given that Geelong had no true match for him, as Coleman was simply too skilled.

They failed to make the Grand Final that year ( eventually won by Essendon ), but in 1950 they did reach the final, defeated by a more efficient Essendon.

They finally won the first semi against Essendon, and the following year took out their only premiership so far, beating Geelong and then Melbourne in the 1954 VFL Grand Final.

Melbourne, which defeated Essendon by just 5 points in the preliminary final, later went on to trounce Richmond by 39 points in the grand final.

The Coleman factor was just what Essendon needed to enable them to take that vital final step to premiership glory, but even so it was not until the business end of the season that this became clear.

Essendon did manage to make the 1968 VFL Grand Final, but lost a heartbreaker to Carlton by just three points and would not make it back to the big stage for a decade-and-a-half.

In July 2007 and with six rounds remaining in the home and away season, Essendon was placed just outside the top Eight and on the brink of making the finals once again when it was announced that Kevin Sheedy's contract would not be renewed after 27 years.

After a largely unsuccessful year in 2010 at Essendon, Knights was dismissed as coach on 29 August 2010, just 12 hours after Essendon's final round defeat to the Western Bulldogs.

The introduction of Melbourne's first orbital bus line, SmartBus route 903, runs just north of Maribyrnong along Buckley Street in Essendon.

* Australian rules football QFL games were played at the ground prior to, and just after, World War I. The ground hosted the 1950 Interstate Carnival, won by the Victorian Football League ( VFL ) side. The ground was also host to a VFL premiership match, Essendon vs Geelong, as part of Round 8, 1952.

The club's first official match was played against Carlton on 7 June 1873, with Essendon winning by one goal.

In 1879 Essendon played Melbourne in one of the earliest night matches recorded when the ball was painted white.

The 1933 season, was probably the start of the Essendon revival, seeing the debut of the player regarded as one of Essendon's greatest players Dick Reynolds.

The 1947 Grand Final has to go down in the ledger as ' one of the ones that got away ', Essendon losing to Carlton by a single point despite managing 30 scoring shots to 21.

Essendon struggled to make the finals in 4th place, but once there they suddenly ignited to put in one of the most consistently devastating September performances in VFL history.

In its Round 16 match against the Kangaroos, Essendon produced one of the biggest comebacks in AFL / VFL history winning by 12 points after trailing the Kangaroos by as much as 69 points during the second quarter.

Essendon would win only three matches and draw one ( against wooden spoon contenders Carlton ) for the entire season, but one of those was against finals-bound rivals and arch-enemy Collingwood in round 19 in a win that would ultimately cost the Magpies a top four berth that season.

2007 was a much better season for Essendon, in which, despite significant wins over Adelaide ( twice ), Fremantle, St Kilda, Sydney ( by one point in Sydney ), the previous year's premiers West Coast ( their second successive win by a solitary point ) and Carlton, they missed the finals for the third year running.

A strong North West suburban club, Essendon over the last 20 years has become one of the most supported sports clubs in Australia.

Two conditions were attached to North ’ s entry: one was that the club had to change their uniform and the other was that they had to give up their recruiting grounds to the Essendon Football Club.

The system opened on 11 October 1906 operating two routes from Flemington Bridge — one to Essendon via Mount Alexander Road, Pascoe Vale Road, Fletcher Street and onto Mount Alexander Road again ( with a short branch line along Puckle Street ), and the second to Saltwater River via Mount Alexander Road, Victoria Street, Racecourse Road, Epsom Road, Union Road and Maribyrnong Road.

During one of his regular panel appearances on The Footy Show, on Wednesday 7 April, Hird launched a surprising attack on the standard of umpiring he believed that Essendon had been dealt in the previous match versus St Kilda.

In a further controversy, Scott McLaren was one of the umpires rostered for the Essendon vs Carlton game the following Friday night.

I want to coach Essendon one day '.

Prior to then, Essendon had ( and still have ) one of the worst records amongst current AFL clubs against Geelong in recent times, having only beaten the Cats once since 2003.

Despite this, 2011 was otherwise a season of improvement for Essendon and Hird will hope to take the Bombers one step further in season 2012.

He kicked 9 goals against Geelong in Round 16, followed it up the next week with a 10 goal, 12 mark and 24 disposal performance in a losing side against Essendon and in the wet in a Qualifying Final against Port Adelaide had 11 marks, 24 disposals and 6 goals in one of his greatest finals performances.

Carlton reached two other Grand Finals during the 1990s, losing to Essendon in 1993 and to the Kangaroos in 1999 ; in 1999, Carlton had come from sixth on the home-and-away ladder to qualify for the Grand Final, famously beating its rival Essendon ( the minor premiers ) by one point in the preliminary final.

The 1990 Premiership team, coached by Leigh Matthews and captained by Tony Shaw, had a one-sided grand final win against Essendon, the Magpies recording a 48 point victory and ending a 32 year premiership drought which included eight grand final losses and one draw.

Melbourne never won a VFA premiership, although they were consistently one of the stronger teams in the competition, finishing runner-up four times, to Carlton in 1877 ( the inaugural year of the VFA ), to Geelong in 1878 and twice to Essendon in 1893 and 1894.

Essendon still was home to domestic flights for one year, until they were transferred to Melbourne Airport on 26 June 1971, with the first arrival of a Boeing 747 occurring later that year.