1938 VFL season

The 1938 VFL season was the 42nd season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs, ran from 23 April until 24 September, and comprised an 18-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top four clubs.

1938 VFL Premiership season
Teams12
PremiersCarlton
(6th premiership)
Minor premiersCarlton
(9th minor premiership)
Matches played112
Highest attendance96,486
Leading Goalkicker MedallistRon Todd (Collingwood)
Brownlow MedallistDick Reynolds (Essendon)

The premiership was won by the Carlton Football Club for the sixth time, after it defeated Collingwood by 15 points in the 1938 VFL Grand Final.

Premiership season

In 1938, 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 1938 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
1938 VFL ladder
Pos Team Pld W L D PF PA PP Pts
1 Carlton (P) 18 14 4 0 1827 1574 116.1 56 Finals
2 Geelong 18 13 5 0 1897 1468 129.2 52
3 Footscray 18 13 5 0 1723 1386 124.3 52
4 Collingwood 18 12 6 0 1942 1652 117.6 48
5 Melbourne 18 11 7 0 1776 1676 106.0 44
6 Richmond 18 10 8 0 1747 1563 111.8 40
7 Essendon 18 9 9 0 1801 1760 102.3 36
8 St Kilda 18 9 9 0 1474 1606 91.8 36
9 North Melbourne 18 6 12 0 1384 1852 74.7 24
10 Fitzroy 18 5 13 0 1543 1742 88.6 20
11 Hawthorn 18 4 14 0 1414 1717 82.4 16
12 South Melbourne 18 2 16 0 1353 1885 71.8 8
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: 1938 VFL Grand Final

Carlton defeated Collingwood 15.10 (100) to 13.7 (85), in front of a crowd of 96,834 people. (For an explanation of scoring see Australian rules football).

Awards

Notable events
  • Geelong half-back flanker Jack Grant won the 1938 130-yard Stawell Gift in eleven and eleven-sixteenths seconds, off a handicap of 11½ yards.
  • The VFL investigated an allegation from the Carlton Football Club that Collingwood rover Harry Collier had king-hit Carlton wingman Jack Carney (one of the smallest ever VFL players at 160 cm) as the teams left the field after the final bell of the Round 5 match at Victoria Park. Collier was suspended for the rest of the 1938 season.
  • Jack Titus revealed that he had been offered £50 by a betting syndicate to play "dead" in Richmond's Round 8 match against South Melbourne. Richmond thrashed South Melbourne 20.15 (135) to 8.14 (62).
  • Footscray becomes the first of the three teams who joined the league in 1925 to make the finals. North Melbourne would not make its first final appearance until 1945 and Hawthorn's first appearance came in 1957.
  • With their win over Collingwood in Round 5, Carlton held an overall winning record against every other club in the competition. However, this would only last until Round 16 when the clubs next met, with Collingwood evening the record. With their Grand Final victory over the Magpies, Carlton once again had a winning record over every other club in combined regular season and finals matches. This would last until Round 8 of the following season, with Collingwood defeating Carlton to even their record.
  • Four of the six games in Round 13 were decided by a one-point margin.[2]

References
  1. "Geelong's match". The Argus. Melbourne. 30 September 1938. p. 22.
  2. Fiddian, Marc (1994). Boilovers, Thrillers and Grand Eras in League and Association Football. Pakenham, Victoria: Pakenham Gazette. p. 42. ISBN 1875475087.
  • 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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