1915 VFL season

Results and statistics for the VFL/AFL season of 1915.

Premiership season

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.

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".

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

Finals

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.

Semi finals

Preliminary Final

Grand final

Carlton defeated Collingwood 11.12 (78) to 6.9 (45), in front of a crowd of 39,343 people. (For an explanation of scoring see Australian rules football).

Awards

• The 1915 VFL Premiership team was Carlton.
• The VFL's leading goalkicker were Dick Lee of Collingwood and Jimmy Freake of Fitzroy with 66 goals each.
• Geelong took the "wooden spoon" in 1915.

Notable events

• 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.
• St Kilda changes its traditional colours of red, white, and black, the colours of the enemy (The German Empire) to red, yellow, and black, the colours of a trusted ally (The Kingdom of Belgium).
• 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.
• At the instigation of the SAFL, Interstate matches were suspended.
• At 2:00PM on Saturday 29 May 1915, Essendon centreman, 1914 Victorian State wingman, and Victorian Amateur Boxing Champion Cyril Gove, rode the racehorse Menthe into third place in the Springbank Corinthian Handicap. a race for amateur riders,^[1] at Moonee Valley Racecourse. Immediately the race was over, he caught a fast cab down Mount Alexander Road, Melbourne to the East Melbourne Cricket Ground, where he played a full game for Essendon in its round 6 match against South Melbourne.^[2][3] According to Essendon Club historian Mapleston^[4] and AFL historian, Col Hutchison,^[5] he then went to the West Melbourne Stadium where, on that same evening, he narrowly lost a torrid three round amateur boxing match on points.

Footnotes

References

• Maplestone, M., Flying Higher: History of the Essendon Football Club 1872-1996, Essendon Football Club, (Melbourne), 1996. ISBN 0-9591740-2-8
• 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

• 1915 Season - AFL Tables