The 1915 VFL season was the 19th season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest-level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured nine clubs and ran from 24 April to 18 September, comprising a 16-match home-and-away season followed by a four-week finals series featuring the top four clubs.
In 1915, the VFL competition consisted of nine teams of 18 on-the-field players each, with no "reserves", although any of the 18 players who had left the playing field for any reason could later resume their place on the field at any time during the match. With the VFL being reduced to nine clubs, a bye was required in the fixture for the first time in the league's history. Each team played each other twice in a home-and-away season of 18 rounds (i.e., 16 matches and 2 byes); once the 18 round home-and-away season had finished, the 1915 VFL Premiers were determined by the specific format and conventions of the amended "Argus system".
Rules for classification: 1. premiership points; 2. percentage; 3. points for Average score: 60.4 Source: AFL Tables
Finals series
All of the 1915 finals were played at the MCG so the home team in the semi-finals and Preliminary Final is purely the higher ranked team from the ladder but in the Grand Final the home team was the team that won the Preliminary Final.
Prior to the season, VFL delegates voted in favour of rule changes to bring the game closer to a hybridisation of Australian rules football and rugby league: specifically the addition of a crossbar to the goal posts over which goals were to be kicked, disallowing forward handpasses, and rules to allow stronger rugby-style tackling between the shoulders and the hips.[1][2] The rules could not come into immediate effect as they required approval at a vote of Australasian Football Council delegates, and this vote never took place due to the war,[3] so none of these changes were ever implemented.
The first round of the 1915 was played on Saturday 24 April 1915, one day before the forces of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed at ANZAC Cove in their first hostile action in World War I.
As a result of World War I St Kilda changed its traditional colours of red, white, and black (the colours of the German Empire) to red, yellow, and black, the colours of Australian ally Belgium.[4][5]
On 12 March 1915, responding to intense public pressure, a motion was put to a VFL meeting (proposed by the Geelong delegate, seconded by the Melbourne delegate) to suspend the VFL competition for the entire season (in March 1915, nobody expected the war to last for as long as it did). The votes were Geelong, Melbourne, Essendon, St Kilda, and South Melbourne "for", and the inner-Melbourne clubs of Carlton, Fitzroy, Collingwood, and Richmond "against". In the absence of the required three-quarters majority, the motion was lost.[4]
At the instigation of the SAFL, interstate matches were suspended.[4]
^"Australian rules game". The Sydney Morning Herald. Sydney, NSW. 17 April 1915. p. 20.
^"Football reform". The Register. Adelaide, SA. 23 January 1915. p. 7.
^"Australian Football Council". The Age. Melbourne. 30 December 1919. p. 7.
^ abcRoss, John (1996). 100 Years of Australian Football. Ringwood, Australia: Viking Books. p. 382. ISBN9781854714343.
^"ST. KILDA: BELGIAN COLORS WORN, When the umpire's whistle calls the St. Kilda team to arms against South
Melbourne [next Saturday] they will be in the full bloom of new colors — something like the gorgeous dahlias in the Alexandra Gardens. The public will cheer them as footballers, but probably the cheering will be more hearty because the colors are those of the brave and suffering Belgians — scarlet, yellow and black. Tho club decided last year to cast aside the old colors, which were those of tho German ruffians, pirates and baby-killers." (The Herald, (Friday, 16 April 1915), p.3.)
Maplestone, M., Flying Higher: History of the Essendon Football Club 1872–1996, Essendon Football Club, (Melbourne), 1996. ISBN0-9591740-2-8
Rogers, S. & Brown, A., Every Game Ever Played: VFL/AFL Results 1897–1997 (Sixth Edition), Viking Books, (Ringwood), 1998. ISBN0-670-90809-6
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. ISBN0-670-86814-0
