Rethinking the historical record
On Saturday 4 September, 1886, at the Albert Park Lake oval, the reigning VFA (Victorian Football Association) premiers South Melbourne, undefeated to that point in the season, took on arch rival, Geelong, also undefeated, for what amounted to the premiership decider. In their first meeting earlier in the year at the Corio Oval in Geelong the teams had fought out a nail-biting draw, and a similarly tight contest was expected this time around.
The two clubs had developed an intense rivalry over the preceding years, having been the dominant forces of the premier Victorian competition since its formation in 1877. The Pivotonians, as Geelong were then known, had claimed the premiership title every year between 1878 and 1884, bar one—in 1881 when the South men had thwarted them. Victorious again in 1885, the red and whites from the Emerald Hill appeared set for another title—they just had to get over their old foe to do it. So determined were South to win the game that they went to the extraordinary lengths of importing from South Australia, the Port Adelaide champion, Alf Bushby, billed as that colony’s best player, just for the occasion.
The Argus reported that, “no football match ever played in the colonies has excited the same amount of interest”. In Geelong two special trains were chartered to take the team and more than 2,000 of its supporters to the match. Many others made their own way to the big smoke, many by steamer. At the ground itself,
“the spectacle presented was one of the most extraordinary ever seen in connection with any athletic sport in Victoria…A procession of cabs, shrouded in dust, passing along Clarendon Street, and the crush by rail caused for an hour a sustained jostle…The pavilion, scoring-box, every building inside the ground and outside it and the boat-houses by the lake were ridged with people [while] the trees inside the ground swayed under their load of sightseers”.[1]
Some reports had the crowd as high as 34,000, although precise figures for suburban grounds such as the Lake oval are not available. But, as Geoffrey Blainey has written, the attendance was “probably larger than any English or European football crowd hitherto recorded. It was not until 1893 that the game of soccer, anywhere in the world, passed the record crowds of Australian football.” [2]
The game itself was something of an anti-climax, as the Geelong men gained the ascendency early and never let it go, at no stage allowing the Southerners to get into stride. However, a failure to convert their many chances meant that a Geelong victory, and with it the premiership title, was not assured until late in the game. Ahead by only 2 goals to 1 at three-quarter time (in an era when behinds, though recorded, did not count toward the final result), two last-quarter goals by renowned goal-sneak, Phil McShane, put the game beyond doubt—the final score being Geelong 4 goals (19 behinds) to South Melbourne 1 goal (5 behinds). A gallant display by South’s best player and captain, Henry ‘Sonny’ Elms, was not enough to stem the tide. Best afield was the Geelong skipper and the club’s greatest player of the era, Dave Hickinbotham, who led by example in the centre, not only by blanketing the dangerous Bushby, but also by sparking many attacking forays himself.
Undefeated for the season, Geelong’s victory in 1886 was their seventh premiership in nine years, a remarkable record that places them among the elite teams of Australian football. Today, however, very few football followers, even those with a good knowledge of the game’s history, would be aware of this achievement, at least not in the way they are aware of the great VFL (Victorian Football League) teams of the past century, such as Collingwood of the 1920s, Melbourne of the 1950s, and Hawthorn of the 1980s. The vagaries of history have meant that Geelong’s feat of winning seven senior VFA premierships during the period when the ‘Association’ was the controlling body of the premier competition in Victoria, has essentially been lost to the official record, and to historical consciousness.
Lost too, have been the achievements of the other leading clubs of the period, such as Geelong’s great rival South Melbourne, which won five flags, including three in a row from 1888, and that of the dynamic Essendon combination of the early 1890s: the ‘Same Olds’ went one better and won four titles in a row, in the process remaining undefeated through the 1893 season. Carlton’s inaugural VFA triumph in 1877, and their second in 1887, also remain unrecognised, as does the first flag of Fitzroy in 1895 and Collingwood’s breakthrough in 1896, achieved the day after the leading clubs of the VFA had agreed to break away and form a league of their own.
What has become clouded over the years, but was self evident at the time of the split and for several decades thereafter, was the essential continuity between the two premier competitions of the pre-1897 and post-1897 period, a continuum not dissimilar to what happened when the Australian Football League (AFL) assumed administrative control of the premier competition from the VFL. In the same manner that the AFL, a separately constituted entity, naturally assumed the records of the VFL, it is now time for them to properly recognise the records of the original controlling body in Victoria, the VFA, a competition that before the formation of the VFL—formed by the breakaway clubs Melbourne, Geelong, South Melbourne, Carlton, Fitzroy, and Essendon, with invitations to St Kilda and Collingwood was in all aspects the equivalent in relative standard, stature and prestige.[3]
A little background on the development of football in Victoria both before and after the creation of the ‘Association’ may help to illustrate our contention that 1877, rather than 1897, should be the date from which official AFL records commence.
For almost twenty years from the time the first set of rules for the game were codified in 1858, football had developed organically, or as some may argue haphazardly, from a minor sport played in local parks by hastily arranged and loosely affiliated groups of men and boys, to a major sport with established and properly constituted football clubs commanding significant local support and requiring increasing complex organisational oversight. As the 1870s progressed and football became more popular, it was clear that such matters as consistency in rules, fixtures, ground administration and maintenance, neutral umpires, dispute resolution, financial planning, and inter-colonial matches and promotion, all required a central organising and prescriptive body. [4] On 7 May 1877, such a body for Victoria, the VFA, was officially constituted after a meeting a club delegates and other interested parties. One week earlier in South Australia, a corresponding body, the South Australian Football Association (SAFA), was establish to oversee the development of football in that state. Organised and centrally administered football in Victoria, and South Australia, can rightly be said to begin in 1877. [5]
The first dozen years of football in Victoria under the control of the Association was something of a ‘golden age’ for the game, a period when it became part of the fabric of Victorian life. Set against the backdrop of an economic boom and the subsequent rise of ‘Marvellous Melbourne’, football in the 1880s was a mass spectator sport to a degree unparalleled in Australia or around the world. Money flowed into the game, crowds flocked to the big matches, and press coverage of football increased significantly. Club captains (who performed the role of what we would now recognise as coaches) and star players became household names and their fortunes, along with their teams, closely followed. The life cycle of the football fan, so familiar to readers one hundred and thirty years later—supporting the local team, attending the weekend match, discussing the results and the ramifications with family and friends, reading the media reports, carrying on the debate with workmates, anticipating the next match, monitoring the young players and new recruits, and, as the season came to an end, looking to next year for better days—was well established by the 1880s. The fundamentals of football culture in Melbourne, both on and off the field, were already in place over a decade before the VFL began.
While the passion for football remained strong though the 1890s, the brilliant Melbourne sheen faded somewhat in the wake of the great depression of that decade, leading to economic austerity, declining attendances, and increased violence both on and off the field. These factors in turn underpinned the breakaway movement within the VFA itself and the subsequent formation of a new ‘League’ competition. Dissatisfaction with the manner in which the VFA was administering the game, most notably the perceived inequity felt by the financially stronger clubs at having to, in effect, subsidise the weaker clubs was the catalyst for the split, although other issues such as the hard line taken by the VFA against any hint of professionalism, and the inadequate response to crowd misbehaviour were also significant. [6]
After months of rumours about a proposed split, on 2 October 1896, the eve of the 1896 premiership decider between Collingwood and South Melbourne, an extraordinary meeting of club officials from Carlton, Essendon, Fitzroy, Geelong, Melbourne, and South Melbourne made the matter official. It was decided that a new organising body called the Victorian Football League be formed, and that invitations also be extended to Collingwood and St Kilda. The rump of the Association, Port Melbourne, Williamstown, Richmond, Footscray, and North Melbourne were not invited.
Momentous though the split was in terms of the administration of football in Victoria, in purely football terms the 1897 season was business as usual. Some rule changes designed to decongest and speed up the game were introduced, as was a modified scoring system that made behinds apart of the official score and thus count toward the final result, but these aside, the fans and the players would have noticed very little difference from the season before. The first round of matches in the new league was played on Saturday, 8 May, 1897, and saw Collingwood take on St Kilda at Victoria Park, Fitzroy play Carlton at Brunswick Street, Geelong against Essendon at Corio Oval, and South Melbourne at home to Melbourne at the Lake Oval.
Every one of those clubs (and their home grounds) was from the Association, indeed they were the core of that body, having comprised the top four places on the VFA ladder in each year since 1889, and every premier and runners-up since 1877. Apart from the new organisation that administered their games, the only other material change for the VFL clubs from 1896 was that they didn’t have to play the five weaker clubs and, perhaps more significantly, visit their home grounds. For all intents and purposes, therefore, the VFL was the VFA under new administration but with most of the same old faces, sans the ‘problematic’ clubs whose economic and/or socio-geographic circumstances had lead to the split in the first place.
Over the ensuing years, three of the five excluded clubs improved their situation, on and off the field, sufficiently enough to have their respective applications to the league approved. Richmond rejoined the coterie in 1908, while in 1925 the magic circle was completed when Footscray and North Melbourne were admitted (along with Hawthorn who had joined the VFA in 1914). [7] Thus, from 1897 to 1986, at least 90% of the VFL was comprised of pre-1897 VFA clubs. Put in another way, the composition of the VFL from 1925 to 1986 was the same as the composition of the VFA from 1888 to 1896, bar the inclusion of Hawthorn and the exclusion of Port Melbourne and Williamstown, two clubs that the VFL steadfastly refused to admit.
The essential historical continuity between the old and the new was reflected to some degree by the ‘official organ’ of the VFL, the ‘Football Record’, (published under licence by Wilke Printers, and edited by Bill Cathie) which until 1918 included in its pages a table titled, the ‘Premiership List’, subtitled ‘League’, with the sub-header note; “Since 1870 the placed clubs on the premiership list have been as follows”. This comprised a table of ‘Premiers’, ‘Second’, and ‘Third’ since 1870 through to the current year of publication. In other words, not only was there no distinction between the VFA premiership table and that of the VFL, but also there were no distinctions between the VFA winners and those of the ‘Challenge Cup’, a title played for between 1870 and 1876.
The table disappeared from the 1918 ‘Record’, but in 1919 was substituted with a new table titled; ‘The First Four since the League’s inception’, which showed club placings since 1897 only, although two supplementary tables were included underneath showing cumulated ‘Places Gained’, the first showing ‘1897 to 1918’, and the second showing ‘1870 to 1918’. In the 1923 Grand Final edition of the Record, for example, the table shows South Melbourne and Geelong each with seven ‘firsts’. However, both of these tables had disappeared by the 1924 final edition, and did not reappear after that, leaving only the VFL placings intact. From one edition of the Record to another, six clubs lost a cumulative twenty senior premierships! [8]
The exclusion of pre-1897 premiership placing in the 1924 Football Record may simply have been an incidental editorial decision, although the anticipated entry into the VFL later that year of more VFA clubs (three more as it transpired), coupled with the intensifying rivalry between the VFL and the VFA for the hearts and minds of local football fans may imbue the decision with greater significance. Whatever the case, the VFL itself, though never particularly interested in matters of standardised records or stats, would have been keen to assert its own historical record and pedigree over that of its rival, and to foster the idea that 1897 represented a clean break from the past, or ‘year zero’, in terms of premier football in Victoria. Notwithstanding any official VFL position, if there ever was one, without a clear pro-active policy from the editors of the prominent sporting press of the day, the record of the pre-League VFA was doomed to lapse as living memory of the period faded over time.
Certainly by the time record-keeping began to be more professional and standardised in the 1960s and beyond, the issue of whether to include the original VFA was a moot point. When the historians, journalists, and statisticians noted club records, player lists, and made other collations they uniformly decided that 1897 and the formation of the League was the most sensible cut off point. The difficulty of sourcing accurate match and player records for the pre-1900 period in general may also have influenced this decision. In effect, the only continuous recognition of the VFA period has been club honour boards, which usually commence from the establishment year of the clubs concerned. As most of the Victorian-based AFL clubs were founded well before the VFL was established (in some cases almost forty years before) the honour boards remain the only ‘official’ recognition of the critical foundation years of the VFA.
The issue of whether accurate game and player data can be sourced has, to a large degree, been addressed by the recent research of Andrew Robinson. [9] While more still needs to be done to fill in the gaps, Robinson’s research has gone a long way to building the solid base from which an accurate statistical record for the period 1877 to 1896 can be created.
While the artificial separation of records between the two premier competitions may have seemed valid throughout the years of the VFL ascendency, there is now very little reason for the separation to be maintained. The VFA as a controlling body of football in Melbourne and suburban rival to the VFL no longer exists, while the VFL itself is now a second tier competition comprising ex-VFA clubs and a smattering of AFL club reserves teams. The presumed logic behind setting 1897 as year zero can now be reassessed with the benefit of historical hindsight and without the encumbrances of a century of local rivalries. The establishment of the AFL in 1990 provides an illustrative modern example of how that can be done.
The AFL is formed
In 1982, after nearly six decades of relative stability, South Melbourne relocated to Sydney and soon became known as the Sydney Swans. Four years later, two new interstate clubs were admitted to the VFL, the West Coast Eagles and the Brisbane Bears. To reflect the push toward a new national competition that these changes represented, and the prospect of further expansion in South Australia, a newly constituted body, the Australian Football League, was established in 1990. Ostensibly the AFL was formed as new national body distinct from the VFL (and marketed as such to the interstate fraternity at the time), but the common understanding now is that the AFL is simply an expanded VFL rebranded to appeal to (or appease) a national audience. The fact that the AFL has incorporated the records of the former VFL competition from 1897 (but not those of the SANFL or the WAFL, for example) reflects this fact. In other words, the AFL is, in essence, the VFL under new administration but with most of the same old faces, combined with the new interstate clubs.
While some pundits have argued that AFL records should not be combined with VFL records on the basis that the AFL is a separate entity, we contend that such a separation would constitute an artificial construct that runs counter to the understanding of most football fans, at least in Victoria. A scenario whereby every AFL team’s premiership tally reverted to zero in 1990, meaning, for example, that Melbourne and Richmond have yet to win a premiership, or that Sydney won their first flag in 2005, may well be correct if only the AFL record counts, but it defies popular memory or common sense. So too does a scenario that pegs Hawthorn’s Michael Tuck (as one example among all the players continuing in 1990 from 1989), as making his debut in Round 1, 1990, and ending his career having played 43 games, or has Kevin Bartlett et al excluded from the list of most AFL games played, because, of course, he didn’t play any AFL games. Such problems are easily solved by reconstituting the nomenclature as V/AFL. This is also the simple solution for the incorporation of the VFA record.
As matters stand now, all the men who played exclusively during the VFA period are absent from the official V/AFL record. Long forgotten champions such as Coulthard, Baker, Hickinbotham, Elms, Hannaysee, and Worrall deserve the recognition that official status confers. As for those players whose careers straddled the two premier competitions, men such as Burns, Thurgood, Banks, Proudfoot, Young, and McGinis, they have had their records split in two, with only the VFL portion deemed worthy of inclusion in official game stats and goals. Albert Thurgood, the greatest player during the first sixty years of the game, is thus credited with only 42 games, when in fact he played more than 100 games with Essendon. His feat of kicking 64 goals in 1893, a tally not surpassed until 1915, remains unrecognised in official V/AFL stats.
For the clubs, the stakes are far higher. In the official record, Collingwood, for example, is said to have won its first flag in 1902, when everyone at the time knew that the club won its first flag only six years before in 1896. Only the club honour board, and some recent forward thinking publications reflects this fact. [10] The same applies to all the ex-VFA teams that had won flags in that competition and then again in the early years of the VFL. Everyone at the time saw the continuity, only latter generations did not. The case of the Geelong Football Club is again instructive in illustrating the point.
After their great triumph of 1886, Geelong were runners-up in 1887 and again in 1888, but subsequently slipped from the top tier, and although the club remained competitive throughout the ensuing decades, they did not taste ultimate success again until thirty-nine years later, in 1925. On 10 October that year at the MCG, the ‘Cats’ hung on against a fast finishing Collingwood to claim their eighth premiership title. In the wake of the victory, few would have been under the misconception that this was Geelong’s first flag, as it has since officially become. Indeed, the sentiment at the time was that at long last the wait was over and that Geelong was premiers again. According to Reg Wilmott of The Argus, “the scene in the Geelong dressing-room was remarkable. The players who had succeeded when teams for 39 years had failed, seemed to be the coolest men there.” One of the most exuberant supporters in the rooms after the game was none other than Dave Hickinbotham, the hero of 1886.
“…the captain [coach] of the last Geelong team to win the premiership in 1886…one of the best of centremen [he] was the centre of an ecstatic throng and when I shook hands with him he said: "I don't often come to Melbourne, but I had to come to-day to hand over the crown I have worn for 39 years to Cliff Rankin. He has won it well, and though I wish him all that anyone could, I hope he won't be the leader of the last victorious team as long as I was." [11]
As most football fans at the time knew, the lineage linking Hickenbotham to Rankin was an unbroken one. Unbroken too, was the lineage that linked the 1963 premierships heroes Bob Davis and Fred Wooller to their descendants Mark Thompson and Tom Harley in 2007. On 29 September of that year, the Cats ended a 44-year premiership draught by drubbing Port Adelaide at the MCG. Fred Wooller, captain of the 1963 premiership team, was on hand to present the cup. He couldn’t get rid of it quickly enough. Handing the cup to Harley and Thompson, Wooller said simply, “Here you are boys, take this off my bloody hands”.[12] As in 1925, the story that day was also one of continuity with the past, of overcoming four decades of disappointment and passing on the crown to a new generation. The men of ’63, like the men of ’86, were delighted to stand aside.
No one that day was proclaiming the win as Geelong first AFL flag, although in fact it was. It was proclaimed as Geelong’s seventh V/AFL flag, and so it was for ‘official’ purposes. But for those who understand the history and the traditions of football that link the different eras together, it was in fact Geelong’s fourteenth premiership win. It is now time for this to be reflected in the official AFL historical record.
Appendix 1: V/AFL Premiership Table, 1877-2011
Club | VFA 1877-1896 | VFL 1897-1989 | AFL 1990 | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|
Adelaide | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
Carlton | 2 | 15 | 1 | 18 |
Collingwood | 1 | 13 | 2 | 16 |
Essendon | 4 | 14 | 2 | 20 |
Fitzroy/Brisbane | 1 | 8 | 3 | 12 |
Footscray | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Fremantle | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Geelong | 7 | 6 | 3 | 16 |
Gold Coast | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
GWS | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Hawthorn | 0 | 8 | 2 | 10 |
Melbourne | 0 | 12 | 0 | 12 |
North Melbourne | 0 | 2 | 2 | 4 |
Port Adelaide | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
Richmond | 0 | 10 | 0 | 10 |
South Melbourne/Sydney | 5 | 3 | 1 | 9 |
St Kilda | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
University | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
West Coast | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
Footnotes
Editor’s Note: A proposal to this effect has been put to the AFL Commission by Colin Carter, on behalf of the Geelong Football Club. While australianfootball.com is not associated with that proposal, we wholeheartedly support it.
- http://australianfootball.com/articles/view/The+football+championship%3A+Geelong+v.+South/156
- Blainey, Geoffrey. A Game of Our Own: The Origins of Australian Football, Black Inc., Melbourne, VIC, 2003, p.108. In August 1890, a match between Carlton and South Melbourne at the M.C.G attracted 32,595 spectators, the official record for the 19th century Australian game.
- In practice such recognition would entail expanding the historic V/AFL premiership table to incorporate VFA premierships for the period 1877 to 1896, as well as general club and player records for the same time frame.
- Hess, Rob et al. A National Game: The History of Australian Rules Football, Penguin, Melbourne VIC, 2008, p.88
- Ibid. p.108
- Significantly, in South Australia, where despite numerous competition name changes, the senior football record extends unbroken from 1877 through to the present day. The SANFL, the modern successor to the SAFA, recognizes that all competition, club, and player records begin in 1877. For example, Norwood, the premier club SAFA club of the nineteenth century (and a frequent opponent of VFA clubs) is officially credited with the thirteen premierships it won before the competition was reconstituted in 1907 under the auspices of the South Australian Football League (SAFL), as are all the other SAFA winners before 1907. Similarly in Western Australia, the official record begins in 1885 when the game there was first organised under the control of the West Australian Football Association (WAFA), notwithstanding the competition’s reconstitution under the West Australian Football League (WAFL) in 1907. Subsequent name and organizational changes since has not affected the unbroken record of WA football since 1885.
- In 1908, the University Football Club, reigning premiers of the Metropolitan Junior Football Association (MFFA), also joined the League. After seven indifferent seasons, the ‘students’ withdrew in 1914 due to the outbreak of the First World war, which had put an enormous strain on player retention.
- Slattery, Geoff (Ed). 100 Years of Grand Final Records, 1912-2011. Slattery Media Group, Melbourne, 2012.
- http://australianfootball.com/articles/view/Shedding+light+on+the+early+VFA/151
- Roberts, Michael & Glenn McFarlane. The Official Collingwood Encyclopedia, rev ed, Slattery Media Group, Melbourne VIC, 2010.
- http://australianfootball.com/articles/view/Geelong+premiers%3A+the+best+team+wins/158
- Murray, John, ed., We Are Geelong: The Story of the Geelong Football Club, Slattery Media Group, Melbourne VIC, p.97.
Comments
Andrew Gigacz 5 September 2012
Excellent and important piece, Adam. Let's hope the AFL see it that way.
Mickey Conaty 5 September 2012
Excellent and provocative article. But but but. The VFA and VFL were different entities in a way that VFL and AFl were not. For one thing, the VFA continued on, and had its own history and records post 1896, whereas the VFL (as those intitals were understood up to 1989) conveniently expired.
You can have- and there have been- similar debtates about cricket statistics in the Kerry Packer WSC era. The "supertests" from that time arguably represented the elite cricket playing of that era; but they are (rightly, in my view) excluded from offical test match cricket statistics because they were not test matches and everyone knew they were not test matches.
Similarly with Rugby League. When Rugby League began in Australia, it was played with identical rules to Rugby Union. At that point you could have folded the statistics from the two sports together seamlessly enough, if Rugby Union had then expired. But since it did not, and as the games evolved on different lines, with different rules and cultures, it is quite appropriate for 1908 to represent a statistical watershed.
No sensible person would argue that the records from early Victorian football are not important to getting a full understanding of the figures who played (and umpired and adminsitrated and so on) in the period, but you can study the records that exist without having to change their status. If you do, you create anomolies. What then becomes of the career of Richmond (or Port Melbourne)players who played before 1896 and kept on playing for Richmond (or Port Melbourne) in the VFA. Are their career games in the VFA/VFL reflected only up to the break, or do they get credit for their whole career?
Andrew Gigacz 5 September 2012
Good points, Mickey. I'm sure Adam will want to comment on them. I don't have an immediate answer to those questions but I do think that Adam's arguments are still fairly compelling. Even though you are probably right in saying "no sensible person would argue that the records from early Victorian football are not important to getting a full understanding of the figures who played", I think those 20 seasons are all too easily ignored, or just not in the public's stream of consciousness. And that won't change as long as the AFL's published official records begin with the 1897.
I'm sure there are valid arguments for other years as starting points too. One of our aims at australianfootball.com is to implement a Stats "engine" that will allow users to select specific periods, while also being able to include and exclude specific associations and leagues. This will enable the creation of customised records, tailored to each user's "view" of history, whatever that might be.
Stay tuned!
Adam Cardosi 5 September 2012
Thanks for the feedback Mickey you raise some valid points. Below the level of premiership allocation, the process of incorporating the 1877-96 period into the V/AFL record is far from clear cut. There may be some anomalies, but on balance these will be of a lesser impact than the anomalies that exist now.
The key issue of which player (and/or which stats) to include would be determined by the status of the club they played for at the time, which is the way it’s done now. The key difference would be that instead of using 1897 as ‘year zero’, a more historically appropriate year, 1877 would become the new cut off. Suddenly the clubs and those who played for them in the two missing decades are officially recognised and brought into the fold. But in any categorization such as this, there still has to be a cut off somewhere.
For the VFA-era players who went on to play for their teams in the VFL there is only gain and current anomalies are ironed out. Thus, under the revamped system the Carlton and Collingwood champ Bill Strickland, who retired after the 1897 season and is now credited with 16 games, would have his previous 200+ games recognised (exactly how many he and his contemporaries played is the great research task awaiting completion). In the case of a hypothetical Richmond player who played between 1896 and 1908, the gain is limited to the games he played in 1896. But the point here is that this is not creating a new anomaly, it’s just lessening slightly a current one. The games he played between 1897 and 1907 would not be counted because Richmond was not in the premier competition in those years. A similar problem will also exist for the Port Melbourne and Williamstown players who played in the pre and post split years. Their pre-1897 record will count but their post record will not. Again, it’s not a new anomaly, just a slight improvement on the existing one.
The best way to address these anomalies is to take the cricket analogy further. Ideally there should be a category of football , and associated stats, known as ‘first class’ that override individual competitions and properly account for all senior football, whether it’s VFA, A/VFL, SANFL, WAFL, TFL, state footy, etc. That would iron out anomalies and also recognise the complete historical record of players across the ages and the various senior competitions.
There are plenty of sources that imply Barry Cable played 115 games of football (in toto), ignoring the other 290 odd ‘other’ senior games he played. One aim of this site is to recognise all senior games, for the interstaters like Cable and Blight, the early VFA men like Jack Worrall, and the later VFA/L men like Allan Hopkins, Ron Todd, Frank Johnson, and Fred Cook, just to name a few. For the AFL, that could be a bridge too far, but at least the ball is now rolling on the pre-1897 VFA part of the equation.
J S 6 September 2012
A thought-provoking argument and an issue I have myself considered recently, however even as a Geelong supporter I cannot find myself supporting a proposal to 'include' 1877-1896 VFA records into VFL/AFL records.
I completely agree with Mickey - the VFL is one and the same as AFL, however the VFA was not and still continues to this day (as the VFA/VFL).
However, importantly, even though I do not agree the inclusion from the league (AFL) perspective, I strongly believe these records should receive due recognition from (especially) the clubs themselves, the media and supporters of football.
When Geelong released a lithograph in 2009 commemorating its 150th year(http://www.geelongcats.com.au/Portals/0/cats_images/cats_promos_2009/150Litho_620px.jpg), it recognised the fifteen decades it had been in operation. Each senior premiership won by the Geelong Football Club was outlined on the timeline with the picture of a premiership cup... except those prior to 1897. Thus it appears at first glance from this image that it took Geelong over six decades for its first success, when this couldn't be further from the truth. Why celebrate 150 years of history without celebrating the successes across the same period?
I think the required approach is similar to that of metropolitan or country football clubs in this country, of which many inevitably have changed leagues multiple times in their histories. A club needs to look after its own history, as do its supporters, historians and the public. If Club A wins the XFL premiership one year, and the year after moves to the YFL - then the YFL has no requirement to acknlowedge that clubs success in another league. However, Club A should celebrate and commemorate its successes at senior level into eternity.
For this and numerous other reasons, I would support the set up of an overarching national body or commission for Australian Football (similar to the old Australian National Football Council) to both look after the code and its history. The complete dominance of the AFL in all forms of the game's administration has meant most memories of code's history outside the VFL/AFL has been lost by the public and commentators. The suggestion of a 'first class' level of football is a good one and this would be a good place to start. But don't rewrite history for the sake of convenience!
Andrew Gigacz 6 September 2012
Completely agree withe call for an over-arching body, SJ. However, I think Adam's case is compelling enough for the inclusion of those records, without "rewriting history". While the transition from VFA to VFL was not necessarily as seamless as that from VFL to AFL, there was a continuity of 8 clubs out of 13 (with 3 of the 5 exclusions eventually re-included). Whether that criterion is enough is debatable and we will never get to a point where everyone agrees one way or another. But without the AFL's "buy-in", it's very difficult to see how those 20 important years will ever re-enter the mainstream public consciousness.
I think inclusion of those records is warranted, albeit with clear acknowledgment given to anomalies such as those brought up by Mickey. With the technology now available, there is no reason the AFL could not publish a Premiership Table that allows users to filter out years prior to 1897, or 1908 (when Richmond joined) or 1987 (West Coast and Brisbane). That's what we plan to do on this website. At least it will give people the chance to see and appreciate what went before 1897.
Pete McLean 6 September 2012
Why start at 1877? The newspapers talked about the Premier team back in the 1860's. As for my team Carlton, they have won 23 Premierships starting in 1869, all in the top competition of the day. Players who were in transition from the VFA to the VFL in 1897, their VFA games should be counted, if they can be worked out. Also pre VFA games should be included by the club. It is very rare to find newspaper match reports that name all 20 players. Some match reports are so brief that only goal kickers are named. Sure, team squads were named in the Friday paper, but what was named and who actually took the field the next day quite often differed. At Blueseum we are endeavouring to gather the players names in all Carlton teams from 1864. We have are over 750 players names up until the end of 1896 who were named in senior team squads, reserves, exhibition games, or were recruited by the Blues.
J S 7 September 2012
How does English football manage records following the creation of the Premier League and breakaway of those teams? From memory they will discuss EPL records when appropriate but also refer to 'top flight' football when referring to premierships and so on. Perhaps this an option for Australian football supporters.
Rhett Bartlett 7 September 2012
Richmond won 2 VFA Flags. 1902 and 1905. Your table at the moment omits them.
FootyMaths Institute 7 September 2012
Following on from Rhett, can you please clarify when you do/dont include VFA flags. Looking at Rhett's reply, it appears as though VFA flags prior to the VFL breakaway are added. Further, footnote 6 notes the continuum of records for the SA and WA comps., which is good for those teams. Victoria is complicated with the two leagues running concurrently, and arguments could be made that in periods, both were vying for supremacy as the main body in the state. It is well known that stars of the VFL would switch to the VFA, and vice versa. Finally, you have linked the Brisbane Lions to be a continuation of the Fitzroy Lions? An interesting (maybe controversial in some circles) position.
Rhett Bartlett 7 September 2012
Of course Richmond are omitted because from 1896-1907 they were in the VFA, whilst the VFL was formed. However, shouldn't flags included, not based on the YEARS, but to an actual CLUBS LINEAGE. So the current Richmond team (formed in 1885) -so be assigned the two flags in 1902 / 1905. Regardless of if they were in the VFA, VFL or whatever at the time - they are still a continuation of the current Richmond and as such should be acknowledged with any 'parent flags'.
The same would go for the current Melbourne club - formed in 1859 - therefore all flags from that year onwards should be included. Not just from 1877.
Andrew Robinson 9 September 2012
A persuasively argued and well set out article, the logic of which could be extended. As others have mentioned, I agree there is some merit in including the pre-1877 seasons in the official record. In particular, the 1870-1876 South Yarra Challenge Cup seasons are worthy of consideration, and (as the article states) these were previously acknowledged through inclusion in the premiership lists in the early Football Records.
Just as it was well known in 1925 that Geelong's premiership that season was not their first, the same could be said for Melbourne's upset 1900 triumph. The Argus account of the 1900 Grand Final refer to "the premiership which had been denied to them for 24 long years" while The Age noted Melbourne had not been "head of the list" since 1876.
P L 19 September 2012
The 'top flight' argument is a good one, and obviously that would include 1870-1876 as well. I guess you would have to list Port Melb and Williamstown as ex-top flight teams, and any others (South Yarra... who else?), even if they never won a top flight premiership, a la University. As top flight is the definition, Richmond would not get the VFA premierships after the VFL's advent credited... seems like a bizarre claim to me!
I have no problem with Fitzroy being included with Brisbane. Painful and asymmetrical though it was, it was officially a merger.
Australian Rules Football History in Progress 22 October 2012
This issue should really be a club thing and not a league thing as such. I'm not saying the AFL should ignore it - heck they have no respect for the history of the game outside of themselves and I know that through personal experience!! They only ran with the local stuff to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the game out of convenience in my opinion.
But there should be recognition for the club efforts in the old VFA when they were there. Even Richmond, Footscray, North Melbourne and indeed Hawthorn should have their success there noted. Equally - and this brings up why combining the lot is not practical - there is also the argument over Port Adelaide's SANFL success. That's just as valid as the VFA, if not more so since 1897 because the SANFL were seen as the then VFL's equal. If West Coast or Fremantle weren't brand new clubs but rather clubs coming up from the WAFL the argument would be valid there as well. And given that today's VFL is the old VFA, where does Geelong's two VFL flags stand? There are many anomalies with the idea of a league combining records without recognising distinct differences. If one included Port Adelaide's SANFL listing they would just about top the list off the top of my head (34 SANFL flags plus the one AFL).
Michael Riley 18 November 2013
I have always found this an interesting article. There is no question that in 1897 a number of clubs split off and created their own competition. They did not try and retain old name, and the old VFA continued, continuing to create their own history. A rewrite of history would mean that Geelong could claim more VFL premierships....really at the cost of understanding history. A Port Melbourne looking at their clubs history would suddenly find themselves in the VFL, A Footscray historian would find that their VFA game against North Melbourne in 1896 was suddenly counted as a VFL game, and that their 1897 game was not.
Premierships and statistics across all sport are usually competition based. Many clubs at junior level move from competition to competition. In European Soccer clubs may play in multiple Leagues in the same year. What mostly happens is that clubs differentiate 'Club Appearances' from appearances in a particular competition. This would be easy to do for VFL/AFL clubs, and therefore interstate games, inter club games, night premierships etc etc could be accounted for.
A much better approach would be to institute the concept of 'first class games' and better recognise SANFL, WAFL, Interstate, and the VFA. Many people have called for this for a long time. A 'first class' football approach addresses the issues that others have raised....but unfortunately would not add any more VFL premierships to Geelong.
Interestingly the same arguments used here could be used with the VFL Seconds and the VAFA. In 1915 the M.A.F.A. had 10 Clubs, with 7 Clubs associated with League clubs: Carlton District – (Carlton), Collingwood District (Collingwood), Fitzroy Juniors (Fitzroy), Leopold (South Melbourne), South Yarra (St. Kilda), University Seconds – (University), Beverley (Richmond) All premierships from 1904 had been won by one of these clubs.
In 1919, six of these clubs formed the core of the new Victorian Junior Football League, later to become the VFL Seconds. In 1920, only four of the 1915 clubs in the MAFA survived, including Elsternwick who had only just joined the competition in 1914. These four then expanded their competition and later renamed it the VAFA.
By the logic of this article, the VFL should seize the VAFA records from pre 1915 and add them to that of the VFL reserves. I can imagine the letter now...'Dear VAFA, please modify your records to say that your organisation began in 1920." In a sense this article would have been much harder to write while the VFA still thrived,. Imagine this article being written in 1939 or even 1980 when the VFA was an independent organisation.
oh..and about the incusing of the VFA records in early 1900s publications. A good example is a bank. Banks used to build huge solid granite buildings to give the illusion of stability and permanence. A list can do the same thing, show that you are not just a new upstart and that you have solid foundations. Once the need was over, such a concept could be easily dropped.
Terry Logozzo 22 November 2013
It is a dereliction of its duty to the game's history for the AFL not to officially count and recognise all VFA records from 1877 onwards to at least 1896 inclusive. Also, there is a strong argument that the Challenge Cup period from the 1860s to 1876, when the "Champion Team" of Victoria was universally recognised and acclaimed in newspapers, should also be officially recognised.
The common theme is official recognition, and celebration, of the teams and players who were in the "TOP FLIGHT", or most senior and respected competition. (I am assuming by its much larger population, number of teams, and playing numbers, Victoria can claim the Top Flight status-notwithstanding that some SA teams won unofficial Champion of Australia titles over Vic. teams pre 1910)
Australian Football started in 1858, it did NOT start in 1897. All previous heroes(eg Wills, Harrison, Coulthard, Thurgood etc )should be OFFICIALLY COUNTED and commemorated! (Although the Hall Of Fame partially corrects this historical amnesia)
The AFL is inconsistent if it fails to officially count and recognise pre 1897 games. In the MCG Sport Museum, amongst other pre 1897 items provided by the AFL, is the Challenge Cup from the 1860s contests. Some AFL figures, and historians, claim this Cup is the oldest football trophy in the world, in any type of football, for an ORGANISED , MULTI TEAM football competition playing under codified rules. (The magnificent, ornate, beautifully inscribed tall silver Cup was long thought lost, until discovered at an auction in the UK about 3 years ago!.It is a treasured relic of Australian Football)
Paul Genis 3 December 2013
Yes I agree
Adam Cardosi 21 June 2014
I couldn't help revisiting this article from 2012 after reading tonight Caroline Wilson's piece in The Age 'History of the AFL could be turned on its head' (http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/history-of-the-afl-could-be-turned-on-its-head-20140620-zsglu.html). It's an idea whose time has come.
Adam Rosser 21 June 2014
I just saw the link to this article on bigfooty.com.au. It is well researched and well written. However, it overlooks one very important point. Football supporters from WA and SA have, in effect, held their noses and swallowed their pride to accept that the AFL treats VFL history as more important than WAFL and SANFL history. That grates EVERY single time a VFL record is treated as if it is an AUSTRALIAN record. Or when, eg, Craig Bradley's games record (SANFL plus VFL plus AFL) is overlooked in favour of Tuck or Bartlett. If the AFL is the custodian of our national game, it needs to realise that adding to the Victorian history of the game while still ignoring the non-Victorian history is offensive to an outright majority of the fans of Australian football. All clubs should be free to recognize their own history (as Port Adelaide does) without the need for AFL sanction. The AFL, politically and morally, must not be seen to be pandering towards the Victorian clubs. If anything, it should be acting to quietly push VFL history into the background and promoting the recent post-1990 (or at least post '87) history which all fans can accept.
Sam Backo 1 June 2018
An interesting analysis with much to commend it. Clearly the records from the 19th Century have as much intrinsic worth as more modern achievements. There is a tendency to at best forget the past and at worst to belittle the achievements of earlier times.
However what is suggested is not a consistent integration with existing statistics. You have proposed merging the VFA premiership results from 1877- 1896 with the VFL/AFL premierships since. However the VFL / AFL premierships are the results of the best 4-8 teams contesting a finals competition of some sort. The VFA premiers are the top placed team after the home and away season only.
It is therefore more proper to compare them with the VFL / AFL minor premiers. Ending the season on top of the ladder is a magnificent result but there are many teams that beat lesser opposition throughout the year but in finals football are not as effective against quality opposition in the pressure cooker intensity of finals footy.
One could counter with the argument that where no finals games are held there is more motivation to finish outright first by putting in strong games week in week out. That is true to some extent, but you are still not comparing like with like. Remember minor premiers can be decided by percentage alone. I do not know if any VFA (minor) premiers fit such a category but percentage is a poor way to decide the best team for the year.
It makes more sense therefore to merge the VFA results with the minor premierships of the VFL / AFL. Similarly other player and club statistics would need to be merged subject to this type of context sensitive analysis. The English Premier League premiership as decided by home and away games comes to mind. (noting that in soccer grand finals are a poor way to decide such games given the poor correlation between performance and results on the scoreboard in any one game, unlike Aussie Rules where unfair results are less common).
Further the VFA (minor) premiers of 1877 to 1887 were decided by press consensus and were therefore highly subjective. Do we merge these with the more objectively achieved later premierships?
Other comments here rightly highlight that the AFL ,while a more natural continuation of the VFL, opens up the question of the SANFL et al. competitions and whether the premiership winners there are equivalent in merit to the VFL. If so one must compile ever larger tables of merged statistics. One can do so but they start to lose meaning. Perhaps one must keep the VFA separate and the AFL separate from all these competitions?
Given the ease with which modern statistics could be viewed online the trend is in any case towards more granular and user defined views of the data. One could simply select which eras to merge.
Nevertheless a great historic analysis that deserves greater public awareness. The early history of the game should rightly be incorporated into the offical views. It just needs to be done correctly.
P.S. It seems the proposal to conduct this merger was rejected by the AFL in 2016. http://www.afl.com.au/news/2016-06-09/afl-knocks-back-cats-bid-for-extra-flags
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