The AFL today launched its trial of player name guernseys  that will be worn by all players across Round 5 of the 2014 Toyota AFL Premiership Season.

AFL General Manager – Football Operations Mark Evans said the trial would take place across Round 5 only, with a view to garnering feedback from fans and other key stakeholders before a decision was made as to the long-term viability of surnames on the back of AFL jumpers.

“The idea of player names on AFL guernseys has been talked about for some time and clubs have been coming forward for a while now asking us to consider the idea based on the fact that many young people now identify very strongly with both name and number when supporting their favourite players or teams,” Mr Evans said.

“With 18 clubs in the AFL competition now, the reality is many fans don’t know every player and so being able to identify players – whether you’re watching a match live or via broadcast - becomes very important.

“This is particularly relevant for clubs in our developing markets, where many spectators might be watching the game for the first time or only getting to know their club and its players.”

The trial has been made possible due to the support of all 18 AFL Clubs and their respective on-field apparel suppliers including ISC, Adidas, Nike, New Balance, Puma, 2XU, BLK, Star Athletic, and XBlades.

“The work involved in preparing this many guernseys across the 18 Clubs just for a single trial round of the Premiership Season has seen a major undertaking from the clubs’ on-field suppliers, for which we’re very grateful,” Mr Evans added.

“We felt it was very important to have every club involved and following the trial we’ll gather feedback and be better placed to make a decision on what direction we will go with in the future.”

Each  club requires multiple guernseys for their players during the season so a certain amount of lead time would be required to make the player names a standard feature for every game. As a result, the earliest the innovation could be introduced permanently would be from next season.

Those clubs currently with key acronyms and symbols recognising aspects of their history will retain those key points on the back of their respective guernseys.

Across the 18 AFL clubs 832 named guernseys were produced in total, which equates to 5,422 letters.

The AFL player currently with the longest surname in the AFL is Sydney’s Lewis Roberts-Thomson, who will wear the initials LRT this week, while a number of players share the shortest surname in the AFL comprising of three letters. 

By way of background, the shortest surname in League history belongs to Tom Re who played for Fitzroy (1936-1937)while the three Cockatoo-Collins brothers - Che, David and Donald - share the record of having the longest surname in the game’s history.