1938 VFL season

The 1938 Victorian Football League season was the 42nd season of the elite Australian rules football competition.

1938 VFL Premiership season
Teams	12
Premiers	Carlton (6th premiership)
Minor premiers	Carlton (9th minor premiership)
Matches played	112
Highest attendance	96,486
Leading Goalkicker Medallist	Ron Todd (Collingwood)
Brownlow Medallist	Dick Reynolds (Essendon)

Premiership season

In 1938, the VFL competition consisted of twelve teams of 18 on-the-field players each, plus one substitute player, known as the 19th 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 1938 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

1938 VFL ladder

Pos	Team	Pld	W	L	D	PF	PA	PP	Pts
1	Carlton (P)	18	14	4	0	1827	1574	116.1	56	Finals
2	Geelong	18	13	5	0	1897	1468	129.2	52
3	Footscray	18	13	5	0	1723	1386	124.3	52
4	Collingwood	18	12	6	0	1942	1652	117.6	48
5	Melbourne	18	11	7	0	1776	1676	106.0	44
6	Richmond	18	10	8	0	1747	1563	111.8	40
7	Essendon	18	9	9	0	1801	1760	102.3	36
8	St Kilda	18	9	9	0	1474	1606	91.8	36
9	North Melbourne	18	6	12	0	1384	1852	74.7	24
10	Fitzroy	18	5	13	0	1543	1742	88.6	20
11	Hawthorn	18	4	14	0	1414	1717	82.4	16
12	South Melbourne	18	2	16	0	1353	1885	71.8	8

Source: VFL Ladder
Rules for classification: 1) points; 2) percentage; 3) number of points for.
(P) Premiers.

Finals

Semi finals

Preliminary Final

Grand final

Carlton defeated Collingwood 15.10 (100) to 13.7 (85), in front of a crowd of 96,834 people. (For an explanation of scoring see Australian rules football).

Awards

• The 1938 VFL Premiership team was Carlton.
• The VFL's leading goalkicker was Ron Todd of Collingwood with 102 goals (120 after finals).
• The Argus newspaper's "Player of the Year", was shared between Norman Ware of Footscray and Marcus Boyall of Collingwood.
• The winner of the 1938 Brownlow Medal was Dick Reynolds of Essendon with 18 votes.
• South Melbourne took the "wooden spoon" in 1938.
• The seconds premiership was won by Geelong for the second consecutive season. Geelong 12.19 (91) defeated Footscray 12.8 (80) in the Grand Final, played as a stand-alone game on Thursday 29 September (Show Day holiday) at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, before a crowd of 5,500.[1]

Notable events

• Geelong half-back flanker Jack Grant won the 1938 130-yard Stawell Gift in eleven and eleven-sixteenths seconds, off a handicap of 11½ yards.
• The VFL investigated an allegation from the Carlton Football Club that Collingwood rover Harry Collier had king-hit Carlton wingman Jack Carney (one of the smallest ever VFL players at 160 cm) as the teams left the field after the final bell of the Round 5 match at Victoria Park. Collier was suspended for the rest of the 1938 season.
• Jack Titus revealed that he had been offered £50 by a betting syndicate to play "dead" in Richmond's Round 8 match against South Melbourne. Richmond thrashed South Melbourne 20.15 (135) to 8.14 (62).
• Footscray becomes the first of the three teams who joined the league in 1925 to make the finals. North Melbourne would not make its first final appearance until 1945 and Hawthorn's first appearance came in 1957.
• With their win over Collingwood in Round 5, Carlton held an overall winning record against every other club in the competition. However, this would only last until Round 16 when the clubs next met, with Collingwood evening the record. With their Grand Final victory over the Magpies, Carlton once again had a winning record over every other club in combined regular season and finals matches. This would last until Round 8 of the following season, with Collingwood defeating Carlton to even their record.
• Four of the six games in Round 13 were decided by a one-point margin.[2]

References

1. "Geelong's match". The Argus. Melbourne, VIC. 30 September 1938. p. 22.
2. Fiddian, Marc (1994). Boilovers, Thrillers and Grand Eras in League and Association Football. Pakenham, Victoria: Pakenham Gazette. p. 42. ISBN 1875475087.

• 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

External links

• 1938 Season - AFL Tables