1915 VFA season

The 1915 Victorian Football Association season was the 39th season of the Australian rules football competition.

1915 premiership season
Teams10
PremiersNorth Melbourne
(5th premiership)
Minor premiersNorth Melbourne
(4th minor premiership)

The season was the first to be played while Australia was fighting in World War I, so the playing stocks of many teams were reduced by enlistments. The season itself was cut five weeks short to encourage more young men to enlist in the war effort. It was the last season played before the Association went into recess for two seasons during the peak of the war.

The premiership was won by the North Melbourne Football Club, after it defeated Brunswick by 48 points in the final on August 7. It was the club's fifth VFA premiership, and its second in a sequence of three premierships won consecutively between 1914 and 1918. North Melbourne won all fifteen premiership matches it played during 1915, becoming the first team to go undefeated through a season since Essendon (L.) in 1893;[1] the season was part of a 58-match winning streak for North Melbourne which lasted from 1914–1919.[2]

Premiership

The home-and-home season was to have been played over eighteen rounds, with each club playing the others twice. However, fighting was intensifying in Europe in World War I, and football was serving as a distraction which was dissuading men from enlisting to fight;[3] as a result, the Association decided on 14 July to end the home-and-home season early after 13 matches, and proceed directly to the finals.[4] The top four clubs contested a finals series under the amended Argus system to determine the premiers for the season.

Ladder
1915 VFA Ladder
TEAMPWLDPFPAPctPTS
1 North Melbourne (P) 13 13 0 0 883 490 55.5 52
2 Brunswick 13 10 3 0 815 610 74.8 40
3 Williamstown 13 9 4 0 774 593 76.6 36
4 Port Melbourne 13 9 4 0 895 719 80.3 36
5 Prahran 13 8 4 1 724 684 94.5 34
6 Footscray 13 7 6 0 816 616 75.5 28
7 Northcote 13 3 8 2 746 792 94.1 16
8 Essendon 13 2 11 0 627 833 132.9 8
9 Brighton 13 1 11 1 627 1072 171.0 6
10 Hawthorn 13 1 12 0 678 1152 169.9 4
Key: P = Played, W = Won, L = Lost, D = Drawn, PF = Points For, Pennsylvania = Points Against, Pct = Percentage; (P) = Premiers, PTS = Premiership points Source[5]

Finals
Semi Finals
Saturday, 24 July Brunswick 10.14 (74) def. Port Melbourne 8.8 (56) North Melbourne Recreation Reserve (crowd: 6,000) [6]
Saturday, 31 July North Melbourne 11.14 (80) def. Williamstown 4.8 (32) North Melbourne Recreation Reserve (crowd: 4,500) [7]
1915 VFA Final
Saturday, 7 August North Melbourne def. Brunswick North Melbourne Recreation Reserve (crowd: 8,000) [1][8]
2.6 (18)
4.8 (32)
9.9 (63)
 11.10 (76)		 Q1
Q2
Q3
 Final		 0.1 (1)
0.7 (7)
1.7 (13)
 3.10 (28)		 Umpires: Kendall
Miles 4, Hawkins 3, Dodemaide 2, Clarke, Rawle Goals Chase, Harker, O'Connor
  • Had Brunswick won, minor premiers North Melbourne would have been entitled to a rematch the following Saturday to decide the premiership.

Notable events
  • Following the 1914 season, a faction of the Northcote and Preston Football Club's committee advised the Association that the club would move its home venue from Croxton Park to Northcote Park, where a new grandstand had been opened;[9] the club's executive, on the other hand, wanted to remain at Croxton Park. Amid the dispute, the Association voted by an 11–1 majority to recognise the Northcote Park faction,[9] in large part because of improvements to Northcote Park and because Croxton Park had been notorious for more than a decade for the unruly conduct of its patrons, something which was generally blamed on the influence of the Croxton Park Hotel which adjoined the ground.[10][9] The Association assisted to appoint a new committee, including members of the old committee who had favoured the move and members of the Northcote Cricket Club which also played at Northcote Park, and recognised the legitimacy of the new committee.[11] Members of the ousted faction, including many players, established a new rival club called the City of Northcote Football Club, which played at Croxton Park in the Victorian Junior Football Association for the next four years.[12]
  • North Melbourne organised to play a match on August 14 against League team St Kilda, which had a bye in its premiership schedule that week, at the St Kilda Cricket Ground to raise money for Lady Stanley's Fund for Australian Wounded Soldiers. It was only the second time that a match had been played between the League and the Association since the breakaway of the League in 1897.[13] Between 9,000–10,000 spectators attended, and £254/3/3 was raised. The football was played in bad spirit, and North Melbourne won 8.9 (57) to 4.7 (31) by 26 points.[14]
  • List of VFA premiers

References
  1. Old Boy (9 August 1915). "The Association – disappointing final game". The Argus. Melbourne. p. 11.
  2. Old Boy (15 September 1919). "Association Semi-Final – North Melbourne's Waterloo". The Argus. Melbourne. p. 3.
  3. Observer (12 July 1915). "Closing the season – an Association proposal". The Argus. Melbourne. p. 5.
  4. "Association season curtailed". The Argus. Melbourne. 15 July 1915. p. 8.
  5. J.W. (24 July 1915). "Premiership lists for 1915". The Australasian. XCIX (2573). Melbourne. p. 177.
  6. Old Boy (26 July 1915). "The Association – first semi-final". The Argus. Melbourne. p. 11.
  7. Observer (2 August 1915). "The Association – second semi-final". The Argus. Melbourne. p. 5.
  8. "North Melbourne beats Brunswick". The Herald. Melbourne. 7 August 1915. p. 3.
  9. "Who's the delegate – Football Association dilemma". The Argus. Melbourne, VIC. 13 October 1914. p. 10.
  10. "Ground disqualified". The Argus. Melbourne. 17 July 1903. p. 6.
  11. "Football – Northcote club's admission". The Leader. Melbourne. 19 December 1914. p. 18.
  12. "Northcote's new club". Winner. Melbourne, VIC. 31 March 1915. p. 7.
  13. Old Boy (3 October 1924). "Football – Championship of Victoria". The Argus. Melbourne. p. 5.
  14. Old Boy (16 August 1915). "Patriotic match". The Argus. Melbourne. p. 11.
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