1927 VFL season
The 1927 VFL season was the 31st season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs, ran from 30 April until 1 October, and comprised an 18-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top four clubs.
| 1927 VFL Premiership season | |
|---|---|
 Brownlow Medal winner Syd Coventry | |
| Teams | 12 |
| Premiers | Collingwood (6th premiership) |
| Minor premiers | Collingwood (9th minor premiership) |
| Matches played | 111 |
| Highest attendance | 63,620 |
| Leading Goalkicker Medallist | Gordon Coventry (Collingwood) |
| Brownlow Medallist | Syd Coventry (Collingwood) |
The premiership was won by the Collingwood Football Club for the sixth time, after it defeated Richmond by 12 points in the 1927 VFL Grand Final.
Premiership season
In 1927, the VFL competition consisted of twelve teams of 18 on-the-field players each, with no "reserves", although any of the 18 players who had left the playing field for any reason could later resume their place on the field at any time during the match.
Teams played each other in a home-and-away season of 18 rounds; matches 12 to 17 were the "home-and-away reverse" of matches 1 to 6, and match 18 the "home-and-away reverse" of match 11.
Once the 18 round home-and-away season had finished, the 1927 VFL Premiers were determined by the specific format and conventions of the amended "Argus 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
| Pos | Team | Pld | W | L | D | PF | PA | PP | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Collingwood (P) | 18 | 15 | 3 | 0 | 1559 | 1035 | 150.6 | 60 | Finals |
| 2 | Richmond | 18 | 14 | 4 | 0 | 1483 | 1102 | 134.6 | 56 | |
| 3 | Geelong | 18 | 14 | 4 | 0 | 1594 | 1208 | 132.0 | 56 | |
| 4 | Carlton | 18 | 13 | 5 | 0 | 1434 | 1178 | 121.7 | 52 | |
| 5 | Melbourne | 18 | 12 | 6 | 0 | 1548 | 1169 | 132.4 | 48 | |
| 6 | South Melbourne | 18 | 9 | 9 | 0 | 1373 | 1431 | 95.9 | 36 | |
| 7 | St Kilda | 18 | 8 | 10 | 0 | 1178 | 1564 | 75.3 | 32 | |
| 8 | Essendon | 18 | 6 | 11 | 1 | 1198 | 1237 | 96.8 | 26 | |
| 9 | Fitzroy | 18 | 6 | 11 | 1 | 1335 | 1558 | 85.7 | 26 | |
| 10 | Footscray | 18 | 6 | 12 | 0 | 1131 | 1325 | 85.4 | 24 | |
| 11 | North Melbourne | 18 | 3 | 15 | 0 | 1085 | 1476 | 73.5 | 12 | |
| 12 | Hawthorn | 18 | 1 | 17 | 0 | 1087 | 1722 | 63.1 | 4 |
Rules for classification: 1) points; 2) percentage; 3) number of points for.
(P) Premiers
Finals
All of the 1927 finals were played at the MCG so the home team in the semi-finals and Preliminary Final is purely the higher ranked team from the ladder but in the Grand Final the home team was the team that won the Preliminary Final.
Semi finals
Grand final
Collingwood defeated Richmond 2.13 (25) to 1.7 (13), in front of a crowd of 34,511 people. (For an explanation of scoring see Australian rules football).
Awards
- The 1927 VFL Premiership team was Collingwood.
- The VFL's leading goalkicker was Gordon Coventry of Collingwood with 97 goals.
- The winner of the 1927 Brownlow Medal was Syd Coventry of Collingwood with 7 votes.
- Hawthorn took the "wooden spoon" in 1927.
- The seconds premiership was won by Carlton for the second straight year. Carlton 12.22 (94) defeated South Melbourne 11.9 (75) in the challenge Grand Final, played as a stand-alone game on 8 October at the Melbourne Cricket Ground before a crowd of 4,210.[1]
Notable events
- In round 9, remembered as "Duncan's Match", Carlton's centre-halfback Alex Duncan took at least 33 marks (some claim he took as many as 45) in a single match.
- South Melbourne Football Club introduced a popular innovation: selling reserved grandstand seats.
- After the round 10 match, the Secretary of the Richmond Football Club, Percy "Pip" Page of "Page–McIntyre system fame, had his jaw broken in a fight that erupted during a club dance.
- The Grand Final was played under atrocious weather conditions on a Melbourne Cricket Ground that resembled a swamp. The two teams scored a combined 38 points, and it was the lowest combined score of any VFL/AFL game (Grand Final or otherwise) played in the 20th century. Including the four seasons played in the 19th century (1897–1900), it was the equal 11th lowest-scoring game of all time.
References
- "League Seconds: Carlton Wins Premiership". The Argus. Melbourne. 10 October 1927. p. 9. Retrieved 11 June 2014 – via National Library of Australia.
- 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