The laws of Australian football describe the rules of the game of Australian rules football.

The laws is an extensive document containing rules and interpretations and is managed by the Australian Football League.

The rules were first formed by Tom Wills and the Melbourne Football Club in 1859. The laws significantly pre-date the advent of a governing body for the sport. The first national and international body, the Australasian Football Council, was formed in 1890 to govern Australasian Rules. Since 1990, the rules for the game known as Australian football have been governed by the AFL and the organisation's Laws of the Game committee. Though the rules have changed and evolved significantly since 1859, some of the basic principles of the game remain the same.

Players, ground and equipment

Eighteen players are permitted to take the field for each team, with an additional four players on an interchange bench (although this number often varies in exhibition and practice matches). The equipment needed to play the game is minimal. As in other kinds of football, players wear boots with stops (known as studs in some regions) in the soles, shorts, and a thick, strong shirt or jumper known as a guernsey.

Four posts are erected at either end of the oval and markings are placed on the ground as shown in the diagram below. They are aligned in a straight line 6.4 metres apart from each other. The size of the ground is not fixed, but must be 135-185m long and 110-155m wide. Lines are drawn on the field to mark

• the boundary,
• a 45m wide centre square,
• two circles in the centre with diameters 3m and 10m and a line dividing the circles in half,
• a 9×6.4m goal square at each end of the ground,
• a 15m wide interchange on one flank of the oval.
• a distance of 50 metres from the goal line (the "Fifty Metre Line"); after introduction of 50m centre square, the "Fifty Metre Lines" were replaced by 45m lines at Sydney Cricket Ground due to the ground's length, to avoid the overlaping with the centre square

Play

The game is a fast-paced combination of speed, athleticism, skill and physical toughness. Players are allowed to tackle the player with the ball and impede opposition players from tackling their teammates (known as shepherding), but not to deliberately strike an opponent (though pushing the margins of these rules is often a substantial part of the game). Like most team sports, tactics are based around trying to get the ball, then — through a combination of running with the ball, hand-passing (punching the ball from the open palm of the other hand) and kicking — deliver it to a player who is within range of goal. Because taking a mark entitles the player to a free kick, a common tactic is to attempt to kick the ball on the full (without bouncing) to a teammate who is within kicking range of goal. In this situation, packs of players often form around the goal square, and the opportunity arises for spectacular high marks (or "speckies"), in which players launch themselves off opponents' backs to mark the ball, high in the air. This particular skill is highly regarded as a spectacle, and an annual "Mark of the Year" is awarded at the end of a season.