1937 VFL season

The 1937 VFL season was the 41st season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs, ran from 24 April until 25 September, and comprised an 18-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top four clubs.

1937 VFL Premiership season
Geelong captain-coach Reg Hickey
Teams12
PremiersGeelong
(3rd premiership)
Minor premiersGeelong
(5th minor premiership)
Matches played112
Highest attendance88,540
Leading Goalkicker MedallistDick Harris (Carlton)
Brownlow MedallistDick Reynolds (Essendon)

The premiership was won by the Geelong Football Club for the third time, after it defeated Collingwood by 32 points in the 1937 VFL Grand Final.

Premiership season

In 1937, the VFL competition consisted of twelve teams of 18 on-the-field players each, plus one substitute player, known as the 19th man. A player could be substituted for any reason; however, once substituted, a player could not return to the field of play under any circumstances.

Teams played each other in a home-and-away season of 18 rounds; matches 12 to 18 were the "home-and-way reverse" of matches 1 to 7.

Once the 18 round home-and-away season had finished, the 1937 VFL Premiers were determined by the specific format and conventions of the Page–McIntyre system.

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

Round 4

Round 5

Round 6

Round 7

Round 8

Round 9

Round 10

Round 11

Round 12

Round 13

Round 14

Round 15

Round 16

Round 17

Round 18

Ladder
1937 VFL ladder
Pos Team Pld W L D PF PA PP Pts
1 Geelong (P) 18 15 3 0 1824 1348 135.3 60 Finals
2 Melbourne 18 15 3 0 1945 1482 131.2 60
3 Collingwood 18 13 5 0 1908 1479 129.0 52
4 Richmond 18 11 6 1 1647 1525 108.0 46
5 Carlton 18 11 7 0 1624 1464 110.9 44
6 St Kilda 18 10 8 0 1600 1580 101.3 40
7 Fitzroy 18 7 11 0 1386 1488 93.1 28
8 Hawthorn 18 7 11 0 1413 1675 84.4 28
9 South Melbourne 18 6 11 1 1527 1698 89.9 26
10 Essendon 18 5 13 0 1530 1689 90.6 20
11 Footscray 18 4 14 0 1409 1722 81.8 16
12 North Melbourne 18 3 15 0 1188 1851 64.2 12
Source: VFL Ladder
Rules for classification: 1) points; 2) percentage; 3) number of points for.
(P) Premiers

Finals

Semi finals

Preliminary Final

Grand final
Main article: 1937 VFL Grand Final

Geelong defeated Collingwood 18.14 (122) to 12.18 (90), in front of a crowd of 88,540 people. (For an explanation of scoring see Australian rules football).

Awards

Notable events
  • Still struggling to recover from the injury that kept him out of the 1936 Grand Final, Bob Pratt only played six matches (kicking 12 goals) for South Melbourne in the 1937 season.
  • Having kicked Collingwood's only goal in the last quarter of the Grand Final, Gordon Coventry retired having played 306 senior VFL games and having scored 1299 goals.
    • In Round 15, Coventry became the first player to play 300 VFL games
  • In Round 16, Collingwood and Melbourne set numerous records for high scoring:
    • a record match aggregate of 295 points, beating by two the record of Essendon and North Melbourne in 1934
    • highest losing score, beating Collingwood's own record against St. Kilda in 1931 and still a club record for Collingwood[2]

References
  1. "New football record". The Argus. Melbourne. 1 October 1937. p. 20.
  2. Atkinson, p. 20.

Sources
  • Atkinson, G. (1982) Everything you ever wanted to know about Australian rules football but couldn't be bothered asking, The Five Mile Press: Melbourne. ISBN 0 86788 009 0.
  • Rogers, S. & Brown, A., Every Game Ever Played: VFL/AFL Results 1897–1997 (Sixth Edition), Viking Books, (Ringwood), 1998. ISBN 0-670-90809-6
  • Ross, J. (ed), 100 Years of Australian Football 1897–1996: The Complete Story of the AFL, All the Big Stories, All the Great Pictures, All the Champions, Every AFL Season Reported, Viking, (Ringwood), 1996. ISBN 0-670-86814-0
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