1928 VFL season

Results and statistics for the Victorian Football League season of 1928.

Premiership season

In 1928, the VFL competition consisted of twelve 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.

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 1928 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 1928 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

Grand final

Collingwood defeated Richmond 13.18 (96) to 9.9 (63), in front of a crowd of 50,026 people. (For an explanation of scoring see Australian rules football).

Awards

• The 1928 VFL Premiership team was Collingwood.
• The VFL's leading goalkicker was Gordon Coventry of Collingwood with 89 goals.
• The winner of the 1928 Brownlow Medal was Ivor Warne-Smith of Melbourne with 8 votes.
• Hawthorn took the "wooden spoon" in 1928.

Notable events

• One of the most unusual games was played at Corio Oval in round 6, between Fitzroy and Geelong. The game finished with Fitzroy scoring only 2.27 (39), hitting the goalposts 5 times, and only scoring their final goal in time on of the fourth quarter. With 25 more behinds than goals, this remains the least accurate performance from any team under this category. Geelong, on the other hand, scored 19.8 (122). Geelong had two fewer scoring shots than the Maroons, but won by eighty-three points; this remains the record winning margin for a team with fewer scoring shots than the opponent.
• The VFL changes its definition of the holding-the-ball rule, so that a player must now be held, rather than bumped, clutched at or touched.
• In the round 7 match between Richmond and Geelong that was played under atrocious weather conditions on a slushy, wet Punt Road Oval, Richmond players wear fingerless gloves (mittens) to help them control the slippery football.
• In round 13 Collingwood finishes the match with only 16 players on the field, increasing the pressure on the VFL to allow clubs to replace injured players.
• On Saturday 16 June, three separate VFL combined teams played representative matches at three different locations, the first VFL team beat a Combined Ovens and Murray Football League side 16.15 (111) to 15.14 (106) at Wangaratta, Victoria, the second beat a Combined New South Wales Australian Football Association side 26.13 (169) to 14.11 (96) at the Sydney Cricket Ground, and the third drew with a Combined South Australian Football League team 13.10 (88) to 11.22 (88) in Adelaide, once an incorrectly attributed behind had been deducted from Victoria's scoreboard score by the goal umpires.
• The Second Semi-Final match between Collingwood and Melbourne finished in a draw, the first draw in the history of VFL finals. The draw meant that the game was replayed the following week, giving Richmond a second bye week. Richmond would ultimately lose the season's Premiership match to a battle-hardened Collingwood by 33 points: 13.18 (96) to 9.9 (63).

References

• Hogan, P., The Tigers Of Old, The Richmond Football Club, (Richmond), 1996. ISBN 0-646-18748-1
• 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

• 1928 Season - AFL Tables