1956 VFL season

The 1956 VFL season was the 60th season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs, ran from 14 April until 15 September, and comprised an 18-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top four clubs.

1956 VFL Premiership season
Teams12
PremiersMelbourne
(8th premiership)
Minor premiersMelbourne
(4th minor premiership)
Consolation seriesSouth Melbourne
(1st Consolation series win)
Matches played112
Highest attendance115,902
Coleman MedallistBill Young (St Kilda)
Brownlow MedallistPeter Box (Footscray)

The premiership was won by the Melbourne Football Club for the eighth time and second time consecutively, after it defeated Collingwood by 73 points in the 1956 VFL Grand Final.

1956 Summer Olympics

From 22 November to 8 December, the 1956 Summer Olympics were to be held in Melbourne, with a re-configured Melbourne Cricket Ground as its Main Stadium.

The need to accommodate this fact brought certain changes to the 1956 VFL season:

  • The 1956 Grand Final was brought forward to 15 September in order to allow sufficient time to prepare the M.C.G. for the Olympics.
  • The season commenced early to accommodate a full eighteen rounds of home-and-away matches.
  • Due to works to demolish the old Grandstand and the construct the new Northern (Olympic) Stand, Melbourne Cricket Ground would not be available to Melbourne for its home matches until Round 5.

It was not desirable for Melbourne to play four consecutive away matches to start the season. This was partly because Melbourne would then have four consecutive home matches between Rounds 12 and 15. Additionally, because of the proximity of the Melbourne Cricket Ground to Punt Road Oval, matches were never scheduled at the venues on the same day; so it would have forced Richmond to open the season with four home matches, then play four away matches from Rounds 12 to 15. To overcome this, Melbourne played only its first three matches away, then played its Round 4 home match against Fitzroy at Punt Road Oval.

Premiership season

In 1956, 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 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 1956 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

1956 VFL ladder
Pos Team Pld W L D PF PA PP Pts
1 Melbourne (P) 18 16 2 0 1429 979 146.0 64 Finals
2 Collingwood 18 13 5 0 1420 1128 125.9 52
3 Geelong 18 13 5 0 1427 1171 121.9 52
4 Footscray 18 11 7 0 1323 1159 114.2 44
5 Carlton 18 10 7 1 1304 1147 113.7 42
6 Essendon 18 10 8 0 1308 1365 95.8 40
7 Hawthorn 18 7 10 1 1193 1342 88.9 30
8 Fitzroy 18 7 11 0 1190 1332 89.3 28
9 South Melbourne 18 6 11 1 1210 1374 88.1 26
10 Richmond 18 6 12 0 1277 1471 86.8 24
11 St Kilda 18 4 13 1 1170 1330 88.0 18
12 North Melbourne 18 3 15 0 1038 1491 69.6 12
Source: VFL ladder
Rules for classification: 1) points; 2) percentage; 3) number of points for.
(P) Premiers

Consolation Night Series Competition

The first VFL night series was held under floodlights at Lake Oval, South Melbourne amongst those teams who had missed the regular final series.

The eight teams that had finished in places 5 to 12 on the end-of-season ladder played in a set of seven elimination matches at the end of the home-and-away season.

The Final was played on the evening of Monday 17 September 1956 (two days after the VFL Grand Final) in front of 33,120 spectators.

Final: South Melbourne 13.16 (94) defeated Carlton 13.10 (78)

Finals

First Semi-Final

Team 1 Qtr 2 Qtr 3 Qtr Final
Geelong 4.2 6.2 6.4 6.5 (41)
Footscray 1.3 4.6 5.8 5.13 (43)
Attendance: 79,402

Second Semi-Final

Team 1 Qtr 2 Qtr 3 Qtr Final
Melbourne 1.4 3.6 8.9 11.14 (80)
Collingwood 1.4 3.7 8.10 8.16 (64)
Attendance: 91,480

Preliminary Final

Team 1 Qtr 2 Qtr 3 Qtr Final
Collingwood 6.1 6.1 11.5 15.6 (96)
Footscray 3.0 5.8 6.9 7.15 (57)
Attendance: 94,104

Grand final

Team 1 Qtr 2 Qtr 3 Qtr Final
Melbourne 2.4 6.11 10.16 17.19 (121)
Collingwood 3.3 4.3 5.6 6.12 (48)
Attendance: 115,902

Awards

Notable events

  • The VFL introduced a "Night Premiership", played between teams that finished outside the final four. The seven elimination matches were played under lights at the Lake Oval. The matches were renowned for their violence both on and off the field. In 1956, licensed venues in Melbourne closed at six o' clock, so the matches provided patrons a location to have a drink after six o'clock; this made these matches very attractive, and the seven matches were attended by an average of 20,000+ patrons. The lighting was dim by modern standards, and it meant that most of the spectators could not always clearly see what was happening on the other side of the ground. On occasion the fights amongst the spectators were so fierce that the players stopped to watch. There was also much violence on the field, with players soon learning that keeping to the well-lit parts of the ground offered considerable protection.
  • In winning the Grand Final, Melbourne created a record by having defeated the same opponent (Collingwood) four times in a single senior VFL season.
  • The official Grand Final attendance of 115,802 (based on gate entrance sales) broke VFL records. The record crowd was largely due to the opening of the Melbourne Cricket Ground's new grandstand, but public interest was also high as a close, hard-fought game was expected. The ground was so packed that spectators sat between the fence and the boundary line. The gates were closed for safety. During the third quarter the crowd milling outside the MCG broke a perimeter fence and more people poured into the MCG. From the following year (in 1957), ticket sales were first used for the final series to prevent overcrowding.
  • The VFL inaugurated a public Brownlow Medal presentation ceremony to be held at the First Semi-Final.
  • Essendon Third Eighteen footballer and junior champion athlete Ron Clarke, son of 1931 Essendon Best and Fairest Tom Clarke, and brother of Essendon champion Jack Clarke, lit the Olympic Flame in the 1956 Olympics' opening ceremony.
  • Australian rules football was a demonstration sport at the 1956 Olympics: on Friday 7 December 1956, as a curtain raiser to the soccer match to decide third and fourth places between Bulgaria and India at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, a combined team of amateur players from the VFA and VFL played a demonstration match of Australian rules football against a team of Victorian Amateur Football Association players in front of an audience of 21,236.

See also

References

  • 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
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.