1933 VFL season

The 1933 VFL season was the 37th season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs, ran from 29 April until 30 September, and comprised an 18-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top four clubs.

1933 VFL Premiership season
Bob Pratt kicked 109 goals (inc. finals)
Teams12
PremiersSouth Melbourne
(3rd premiership)
Minor premiersRichmond
(2nd minor premiership)
Matches played112
Highest attendance75,754
Leading Goalkicker MedallistGordon Coventry (Collingwood)
Brownlow MedallistWilfred Smallhorn (Fitzroy)

The premiership was won by the South Melbourne Football Club for the third time, after it defeated Richmond by 42 points in the 1933 VFL Grand Final.

Premiership season

In 1933, 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 1933 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

1933 VFL ladder
Pos Team Pld W L D PF PA PP Pts
1 Richmond 18 15 3 0 1746 1237 141.1 60 Finals
2 South Melbourne (P) 18 13 5 0 1764 1383 127.5 52
3 Carlton 18 13 5 0 1702 1488 114.4 52
4 Geelong 18 12 6 0 1730 1327 130.4 48
5 Fitzroy 18 11 6 1 1534 1453 105.6 46
6 Collingwood 18 11 7 0 1760 1559 112.9 44
7 Footscray 18 11 7 0 1520 1555 97.7 44
8 North Melbourne 18 7 10 1 1463 1717 85.2 30
9 St Kilda 18 6 12 0 1380 1706 80.9 24
10 Melbourne 18 3 15 0 1511 1842 82.0 12
11 Hawthorn 18 3 15 0 1178 1607 73.3 12
12 Essendon 18 2 16 0 1392 1806 77.1 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

South Melbourne defeated Richmond 9.17 (71) to 4.5 (29), in front of a crowd of 75,754 people. (For an explanation of scoring see Australian rules football).

Awards

Notable events

  • "Checker" Hughes took over as coach of Melbourne. He renamed the team "The Demons" from "The Fuchsias."
  • In Round 5, St Kilda defeated North Melbourne 13.19 (97) to 11.17 (83), despite having only 15 players left at the end of a brutal match, which was stopped at one stage because a wild brawl, instigated by the North Melbourne players, had erupted in the centre.
    • St Kilda captain Clarrie Hindson had a broken ankle, full-forward Bill Mohr had two broken ribs, forward Jack Anderson had been knocked unconscious, centreman W.C. "Billy" Roberts was felled once, recovered, and then was felled a second time, and rover Roy "Tiger" Bence was also knocked out.
    • The St Kilda President, Gallipoli veteran and naval war hero Commander Fred Arlington-Burke, described St Kilda's 15-man victory as the greatest moral victory in the club's history, and a "Badge of Courage" was struck by the Football Club and was awarded to each of the players that took part in the match.
    • The medallion is silver, coin shaped, with coin-like reeding around its outer perimeter (with no circumferential milling), with a St Kilda Football Club badge affixed to it, and the following inscription: "St KILDA DEFEATED Nth MELBOURNE WITH 15 MEN MAY 27th 1933". (Photograph of Medal at Ross, 1996, p. 140)
  • In Round 8, Essendon experimented with a siren, rather than a bell at Windy Hill.
  • In the dying minutes of the close South MelbourneRichmond match in Round 8, umpire Jack McMurray Sr. awarded a controversial free kick against Richmond full back Maurie Sheahan, judging that he was deliberately wasting time by setting up to kick in with a place kick after a South Melbourne behind – despite the fact that time was off until the kick-in was executed. The resulting goal narrowed South Melbourne's deficit to five points, but the siren sounded almost immediately after the next centre bounce.[2][3]
  • In the 1933 Interstate Carnival, held in Sydney, the Victorian team won all five of its matches.
  • During the 1933 Carnival, the Australian National Football Council considered a proposal from the New South Wales Rugby Football League that the two codes merge and play a single, Australian "national" game. A trial match of this proposed universal football was conducted behind closed doors during the carnival. The ANFC subsequently rejected the proposal.
  • The President of the South Melbourne Football Club, grocery magnate Archie Crofts, had brought so many interstate players to South Melbourne – with the promise of a well-paid regular job in one of the Crofts Grocery chain stores in addition to their receiving maximum playing and training fees allowable under the "Coulter Law" – that the 1933 team was christened "The Foreign Legion". Those comprising the "Foreign Legion" were Bert Beard, John Bowe, Brighton Diggins, Bill Faul, and Joe O'Meara from Western Australia, Ossie Bertram, Wilbur Harris, and Jack Wade from South Australia, and Frank Davies and Laurie Nash from Tasmania. South Melbourne played in four consecutive Grand Finals from 1933 to 1936, but won only the 1933 premiership.
  • North Melbourne's win over Collingwood in Round 6 was the first by one of the three 1925 entrants (Footscray, Hawthorn, North Melbourne) over the Magpies. Prior to that, Collingwood had won the first 37 meetings against the three newest clubs. Footscray's first win over Collingwood came in Round 9 of this year, but Hawthorn would not record its first win over Collingwood until Round 5 of the 1942 VFL season (in the 30th regular-season meeting between the two clubs).

See also

Footnotes

  1. Onlooker (29 September 1933). "League seconds". The Argus. Melbourne. p. 13.
  2. "McMurray was right in penalty". The Sporting Globe. 21 June 1933. p. 9.
  3. "Field umpire displayed rare courage". The Record. South Melbourne. 7 August 1954. p. 3.

References

  • Hogan, P., The Tigers of Old, The Richmond Football Club, (Richmond), 1996. ISBN 0-646-18748-1
  • 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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