1947 VFL season

The 1947 VFL season was the 51st season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs, ran from 19 April until 27 September, and comprised a 19-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top four clubs.

1947 VFL Premiership season
Teams12
PremiersCarlton
(8th premiership)
Minor premiersCarlton
(11th minor premiership)
Matches played118
Highest attendance85,793
Leading Goalkicker MedallistFred Fanning (Melbourne)
Brownlow MedallistBert Deacon (Carlton)

The premiership was won by the Carlton Football Club for the eighth time, after it defeated Essendon by one point in the 1947 VFL Grand Final.

Premiership season

In 1947, the VFL competition consisted of twelve teams of 18 on-the-field players each, plus two substitute players, known as the 19th man and the 20th 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 19 rounds; matches 12 to 19 were the "home-and-way reverse" of matches 1 to 8.

Once the 19 round home-and-away season had finished, the 1947 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

Round 19

Ladder
1947 VFL ladder
Pos Team Pld W L D PF PA PP Pts
1 Carlton (P) 19 15 4 0 1833 1368 134.0 60 Finals
2 Essendon 19 14 5 0 1876 1528 122.8 56
3 Fitzroy 19 13 6 0 1736 1370 126.7 52
4 Richmond 19 12 7 0 1726 1582 109.1 48
5 Collingwood 19 11 7 1 1738 1546 112.4 46
6 Melbourne 19 11 8 0 1742 1488 117.1 44
7 Geelong 19 11 8 0 1761 1705 103.3 44
8 South Melbourne 19 8 10 1 1602 1652 97.0 34
9 Footscray 19 8 10 1 1646 1713 96.1 34
10 North Melbourne 19 4 15 0 1390 1789 77.7 16
11 Hawthorn 19 4 15 0 1456 1907 76.4 16
12 St Kilda 19 1 17 1 1221 2079 58.7 6
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: 1947 VFL Grand Final

Carlton defeated Essendon 13.8 (86) to 11.19 (85) in front of a crowd of 85,793 people. (For an explanation of scoring see Australian rules football).

Awards

Notable events
  • In Round 2, South Melbourne returned to the Lake Oval for the first time since 1941 after it was vacated by the military and had its grandstand rebuilt; this was the final home ground change related to World War II.
  • At the first bounce, at the very start of the round 5 match between Hawthorn and Richmond, Richmond ruckman Laurie Taylor punched the ball an amazing 40 yards and dislocated his shoulder.
  • Richmond champion Jack Titus, having retired early in the 1946 VFA season, having scored 1159 goals in his senior career of 294 games with Richmond (1926–1943), 23 games with Coburg (1945–1946), and 14 games for Victoria (1929–1934, 1936), played one match for the Richmond Second Eighteen when it was short of players at the age of 39 and scored 12 goals against North Melbourne.
  • In round 6, with North Melbourne trailing Essendon by 44 points at three quarter time, North Melbourne captain Les Foote moved into the ruck and almost single-handedly led a comeback which ended with an eight-point victory to North Melbourne: North Melbourne 15.12 (102) to Essendon 14.10 (94).[3]
  • Western Australia defeated Victoria 16.10 (106) to 14.17 (101) at the Tenth ANFC Carnival in Tasmania. Also, in a challenge match, a combined South Australian and Western Australian team defeated the Victorian team 21.14 (140) to 19.15 (129).
  • In the final round and his last league match before accepting a coaching job in the Western District, Melbourne's Fred Fanning kicked 18 goals 1 behind. This broke Gordon Coventry's Round 12, 1930 record for the most goals by one player in a VFL match, and still stands today.
  • Carlton won the Grand Final by a point after Fred Stafford kicked a goal just before the final bell.

See also

References
  1. "North Seconds win first pennant". The Argus. Melbourne. 29 September 1947. p. 18.
  2. "Melbourne 3rds title". The Sporting Globe. Melbourne. 6 September 1947. p. 3.
  3. Les Foote#Sixth round 1947
  • Maplestone, M., Flying Higher: History of the Essendon Football Club 1872–1996, Essendon Football Club, (Melbourne), 1996. ISBN 0-9591740-2-8
  • 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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