1977 VFL season

The 1977 VFL season was the 81st season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs, ran from 2 April until 1 October, and comprised a 22-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top five clubs.

1977 VFL Premiership season
Teams12
PremiersNorth Melbourne
(2nd premiership)
Minor premiersCollingwood
(17th minor premiership)
Night seriesHawthorn
(1st Night series win)
Matches played139
Attendance3,304,221 (23,771 per match)
Highest attendance108,224
Coleman MedallistPeter Hudson (Hawthorn)
Brownlow MedallistGraham Teasdale (South Melbourne)

The premiership was won by the North Melbourne Football Club for the second time, after it defeated Collingwood by 27 points in the 1977 VFL Grand Final replay.

Night series

Hawthorn defeated Carlton 14.11 (95) to 11.5 (71) in the final.

Premiership season

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

Round 20

Round 21

Round 22

Ladder
1977 VFL ladder
Pos Team Pld W L D PF PA PP Pts
1 Collingwood 22 18 4 0 2560 1959 130.7 72 Finals
2 Hawthorn 22 17 5 0 2618 1959 133.6 68
3 North Melbourne (P) 22 15 7 0 2124 1803 117.8 60
4 Richmond 22 14 7 1 2370 2085 113.7 58
5 South Melbourne 22 13 8 1 2148 1942 110.6 54
6 Carlton 22 13 9 0 2081 1859 111.9 52
7 Footscray 22 10 11 1 2170 2141 101.4 42
8 Geelong 22 8 14 0 1930 2333 82.7 32
9 Essendon 22 7 14 1 2085 2518 82.8 30
10 Fitzroy 22 6 16 0 2072 2474 83.8 24
11 Melbourne 22 5 17 0 2117 2492 85.0 20
12 St Kilda 22 3 17 2 1966 2676 73.5 16
Source: VFL ladder
Rules for classification: 1) points; 2) percentage; 3) number of points for.
(P) Premiers

Finals

Elimination final
Elimination final
3 September 2:30pm Richmond def. South Melbourne VFL Park (crowd: 63,663)
5.4 (34)
7.6 (48)
11.8 (74)
 13.10 (88)		 Q1
Q2
Q3
 Final		 2.3 (15)
6.7 (43)
6.10 (46)
 7.12 (54)		 Umpires: Deller, Smith
Television broadcast: Seven Network
Edwards, Monteath, Cloke, Dunne 2
Malthouse, Noonan, Bartlett, Raines, Roberts 1		 Goals 2 Lambert
1 Goss, Browning, Teasdale, Daniher, Morrison
Bourke, Cloke, Bartlett, Malthouse, Monteath, Sheedy, Edwards Best Round, McLeish, Browning, Morrison, Rantall, O'Neill, Teasdale

Qualifying final

Semi finals

Preliminary final

Grand final
Main article: 1977 VFL Grand Final

North Melbourne drew with Collingwood 9.22 (76) to 10.16 (76), in front of a crowd of 108,244 people.

Grand final replay

A replay was held, and North Melbourne defeated Collingwood 21.25 (151) to 19.10 (124) in front of a crowd of 98,491 people. (For an explanation of scoring see Australian rules football).

Awards

Notable events
  • Hawthorn's round 6 victory over St Kilda set the following records – 41 behinds (previous highest 34) and 66 scoring shots (previous highest 60). 13 different Hawthorn players kicked a behind – still a VFL/AFL record.[2]
  • For the only time in VFL/AFL history, two players from one team – Peter Hudson (110) and Leigh Matthews (91) of Hawthorn – combined for over 200 goals in one season. Additionally, it was the first time since 1906 that one club produced the top two leading goalkickers in a season.
  • In the Round 15 game against Geelong, Hawthorn had three players – Hudson with eight, John Hendrie with eight, and Leigh Matthews with seven – kick seven or more goals in one match. This has been repeated only by Fitzroy with Matthew Rendell, Bernie Quinlan and Michael Conlan in 1983 against North Melbourne.
  • In shocking conditions in Round 12, Carlton and Geelong played the first match since the 1927 Grand Final where both teams scored three or fewer goals. Both teams' scores were lower than any score from any other game during 1977. In the same round, North Melbourne's Malcolm Blight missed a set shot for goal after the final siren at the Arden Street Oval, which resulted in Hawthorn winning the game.
  • In Round 16, Geelong beat Collingwood despite having fifteen fewer scoring shots. This equalled Richmond's record against Fitzroy from 1957.
  • In the Reserve and Under-19 Grades, the appalling weather of mid- to late June caused the only cancellation (as opposed to postponement) of matches in VFL/AFL history until 2015. These cancellations affected Round 14 in the Reserves and Round 13 in the Under-19s.
  • South Melbourne played in its last finals series before relocating to Sydney, as well as its first final series since 1970, and only its second since the infamous 1945 "bloodbath" grand final.
  • St Kilda "won" its nineteenth wooden spoon and first since 1955. With the club having finished last 27 times since 1897, this twenty-two year gap is the longest between spoons for the club.
  • Collingwood became the first VFL/AFL team to win the Minor Premiership after winning the wooden spoon the year before.
  • North Melbourne is the only team to play twenty-seven premiership matches in a VFL/AFL season.[3] With the abolition of grand final replays in 2016, this record will remain indefinitely, as the current AFL fixture allows for a maximum of 26 matches (22 home and away matches plus four finals). John Cassin was the only player to play in all 27 matches.

See also

References
  1. "All the scores". The Age. Melbourne, VIC. 26 September 1977. p. 30.
  2. "Hawthorn v St Kilda, Rd 6, 1977". afltables.com. Retrieved 16 September 2020.
  3. Rodgers, Stephen (1996). 100 Years of AFL players – Volume 3. Melbourne: East-Side Printing. p. 1586. ISBN 0646300164.
  • Stephen Rogers and Ashley Brown (1998). Every Game Ever Played. 6th ed. Victoria: Penguin Books.


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