1958 VFA premiership season
Teams16
PremiersWilliamstown
9th premiership
Minor premiersWilliamstown
7th minor premiership

The 1958 Victorian Football Association season was the 77th season of the Australian rules football competition. The premiership was won by the Williamstown Football Club, after it defeated Moorabbin in the grand final replay on 4 October by 32 points. It was Williamstown's ninth premiership, drawing it level with Footscray for the most premierships won in VFA history, and it was the fourth of five premierships won in six seasons between 1954 and 1959.

Association Membership

Map of VFA club locations, highlighting the expansion into the outer suburbs (1958–1966); teams shown with blue dots or arrows joined the Association during this period of expansion.
Note: the backdrop of this map is greater Melbourne ca. 2011; it includes roads and local government boundaries which did not exist until well after 1966

The 1958 season marked the beginning of the expansion of the Association from fourteen clubs to twenty clubs. The Association had been planning for a scheme to expand into the fastest developing outer suburbs since as early as 1946, when it was still playing under and trying to promote the throw-pass rules.[1] This current plan was made public in 1956, when the Association announced its intention to expand to twenty teams, proposing a vision which focused on expansion further into the outer suburbs of greater Melbourne – Dandenong to the south-east, Heidelberg or Greensborough to the north-east, Sunshine to the west and Frankston to the south – as well as a proposed expansion into the regional markets of Ballarat and Bendigo.[2]

Between 1958 and 1966, a total of seven new clubs – Dandenong, Frankston, Mordialloc, Sunshine, Waverley and Werribee from greater Melbourne and Geelong West from regional Victoria – joined the Association, as well as Caulfield (in the form of a merger with Brighton); and with the departure of Moorabbin in 1964, this brought the number of clubs to twenty.

In 1958, the first two new clubs of this expansion joined the Association to bring numbers to sixteen: Mordialloc and Dandenong, both switching from the Federal District League. Mordialloc announced in August 1957 that it had accepted the Association's invitation, and revealed that it had been approached to join at short notice for the 1957 season, but had declined.[3] Dandenong voted to accept its invitation in September 1957, although only by a small 53–49 majority.[4] The Federal District League, which was not consulted prior to the Association extending the invitations to its teams and had lost Moorabbin the same way in 1951, was unhappy with the "back-door methods" that the Association had taken.[5]

Part of the Association's plans to expand to twenty clubs was the partitioning of the Association into two divisions of ten teams. The Association ultimately split into a first division and a second division with promotion and relegation between them from 1961; but, the other alternative considered attempted to reduce the travel burden between outlying suburbs by partitioning the Association into northern and southern divisions, with the winner of each division to contest the Association-wide premiership at the end of the season. To trial the geographic division structure, the clubs were divided into northern and southern sections in the 1958 fixture, and clubs were drawn to play other clubs in their own section twice and clubs from the other section only once; but, the final results were compiled into a single ladder and a single finals series.[6]

The Camberwell Football Club, which was struggling due to poor support, had considered withdrawing from the Association prior to the start of the season, but decided to remain.[7] Northcote and Brighton both operated as amateur clubs throughout the season, and Preston became amateur after June 11, abandoning its £4/10/– match payments.[8]

Premiership

The home-and-home season was played over only eighteen matches, a reduction from the twenty matches played in previous years. No matches were held for the two weekends of the Interstate Carnival, which was held in Melbourne. The top four clubs then contested a finals series under the Page–McIntyre system to determine the premiers for the season.

Ladder

1958 VFA ladder
TEAMPWLDPFPAPctPTS
1 Williamstown (P) 18 15 3 0 1563 1142 136.9 60
2 Moorabbin 18 13 3 2 1556 1036 150.2 56
3 Box Hill 18 13 5 0 1477 1045 141.3 52
4 Port Melbourne 18 13 5 0 1715 1221 140.5 52
5 Coburg 18 12 6 0 1567 1330 117.8 48
6 Sandringham 18 11 6 1 1483 1309 113.3 46
7 Yarraville 18 11 7 0 1543 1222 126.3 44
8 Brunswick 18 10 7 1 1346 1258 107.0 42
9 Camberwell 18 10 8 0 1350 1224 110.3 40
10 Mordialloc 18 8 9 1 1194 1317 90.7 34
11 Prahran 18 7 11 0 1301 1604 81.1 28
12 Preston 18 6 11 1 1354 1393 97.2 26
13 Oakleigh 18 5 13 0 1307 1469 89.0 20
14 Dandenong 18 3 15 0 1109 1733 64.0 12
15 Northcote 18 2 16 0 1011 1739 58.1 8
16 Brighton 18 2 16 0 1049 1883 55.7 8
Key: P = Played, W = Won, L = Lost, D = Drawn, PF = Points For, PA = Points Against, Pct = Percentage; (P) = Premiers, PTS = Premiership points Source[9]

Finals

Semifinals
Saturday, 6 September Box Hill 11.9 (75) def. by Port Melbourne 17.20 (122) St Kilda Cricket Ground (crowd: 9,000) [10]
Saturday, 13 September Williamstown 8.21 (69) def. by Moorabbin 13.13 (91) St Kilda Cricket Ground (crowd: 9,000) [11]
Preliminary Final
Saturday, 20 September Williamstown 11.14 (80) def. Port Melbourne 8.10 (58) St Kilda Cricket Ground (crowd: 8,400) [12]
1958 VFA Grand Final
Saturday, 27 September Moorabbin drew with Williamstown St Kilda Cricket Ground (crowd: 20,000) [13]
4.5 (29)
4.6 (30)
5.8 (38)
 7.9 (51)		 Q1
Q2
Q3
 Final		 0.1 (1)
3.5 (23)
4.9 (33)
 6.15 (51)		 Umpires: Rowe
Renwick 4, Moroney 2, Whalebone Goals Cullinan 2, Mazouris 2, Pelly, Reed
Ryan (ribs) Injuries Ward (ankle), Evans (jaw)
  • Moorabbin led for the entire match until Williamstown tied the scores with 30 seconds remaining
1958 VFA Grand Final replay
Saturday, 4 October Moorabbin def. by Williamstown St Kilda Cricket Ground (crowd: 22,000) [14]
0.0 (0)
3.3 (21)
3.5 (23)
 8.16 (64)		 Q1
Q2
Q3
 Final		 3.12 (30)
5.14 (44)
12.18 (90)
 13.18 (96)		 Umpires: Rowe
Renwick 3, Crameri 2, Evans, Jones, P. Ryan Goals Cullinan 5, Mazouris 2, Pelly 2, B. Beitzel, Callahan, Murphy, Ramsay
Manie (toe), Moroney (ankle) Injuries

Awards

Notable events

Interstate Carnival

The Association fielded its representative team in the 1958 Melbourne Carnival, competing in Section 1. The team was captained by Camberwell's Ken Ross.

The Association finished last with a record of 1–3 and a poorer percentage than South Australia; the Association's final match of the carnival was against the then-winless South Australia, but South Australia's large win was enough to consign the Association to last place. As a result, the Association was relegated directly to Section 2 for the following carnival.[17]

Barry Metcalfe (Mordialloc) was named in the All-Australian team on the wing; he was the only Association player named in the team.[18]

1958 Melbourne Carnival
Wednesday, 2 July Victoria (VFA) 15.12 (102) def. Tasmania 13.16 (94) Melbourne Cricket Ground (crowd: 5,852) [19]
Monday, 7 July (night) Victoria (VFL) 13.23 (101) def. Victoria (VFA) 7.10 (52) South Melbourne Cricket Ground (crowd: 7,200) [20]
Wednesday, 9 July Western Australia 21.16 (142) def. Victoria (VFA) 11.8 (74) Melbourne Cricket Ground (crowd: 3,074) [21]
Friday, 11 July (night) South Australia 16.15 (111) def. Victoria (VFA) 5.13 (43) South Melbourne Cricket Ground (crowd: 1,750) [22]

Other notable events

  • As had occurred in 1957, from the start of the season the match of the round was played on the preceding Wednesday night under floodlights at the South Melbourne Cricket Ground; but, the practice was abandoned after the match on 7 May was postponed due to inclement weather. The risk of worsening weather conditions in winter, disruptions to the clubs' training and social schedules, and poorer night crowds than had been seen in 1957 were the main reasons for abandoning the night matches.[23] Night matches did not return in 1959.
  • A grand final replay was held after the Grand Final between Moorabbin and Williamstown finished as a draw. The Association had not made contingency plans for the availability of the St Kilda Cricket Ground in the event of a replay being required,[24] and the ground needed to be prepared for St Kilda's first district cricket match on 18 October, but the Victorian Cricket Association and Carlton Cricket Club agreed to move the match to Carlton to accommodate the replay.[25]

References

  1. ↑ "Senior football club possible in Sunshine". Sunshine Advocate. Sunshine, VIC. 25 January 1946. p. 1.
  2. ↑ Noel Carrick (2 July 1956). "Ballarat, Bendigo in V.F.A. plan to expand". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. p. 29.
  3. ↑ Noel Carrick (13 August 1957). "V.F.A. plan for 4 new sides". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. p. 40.
  4. ↑ "Dandenong for V.F.A.". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. 6 September 1957. p. 34.
  5. ↑ Noel Carrick (14 August 1957). "V.F.A. accused of discourtesy". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. p. 44.
  6. ↑ Noel Carrick (19 September 1957). "Association planning 20-team competition". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. p. 40.
  7. ↑ Noel Carrick (26 May 1958). "Camberwell second on VFA ladder". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. p. 32.
  8. ↑ Noel Carrick (11 June 1958). "Club stops its "pay for play" but...". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. p. 50.
  9. 1 2 Noel Carrick (1 September 1958). "Port wins way to VFA semi-final". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. p. 48.
  10. ↑ Noel Carrick (8 September 1958). "Fights finished Box Hill's chances in VFA semi-final". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. p. 42.
  11. ↑ Noel Carrick (15 September 1958). "'Town kicked way out of a winning change". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. p. 41.
  12. ↑ Noel Carrick (22 September 1958). "Rucks, backs give Williamstown final win". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. p. 47.
  13. ↑ Noel Carrick (29 September 1958). "Moorabbin backs saved the day". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. p. 39.
  14. ↑ Noel Carrick (6 October 1958). "Seagulls won all over the ground". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. p. 37.
  15. ↑ Noel Carrick (4 September 1958). ""Olympian" wins Liston trophy". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. p. 56.
  16. ↑ "Coburg wins the VFA seconds flag". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. 29 September 1958. p. 36.
  17. ↑ Rex Pullen (11 July 1958). "Unfit, but he'll try to save side". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. p. 40.
  18. ↑ Kevin Hogan (17 July 1958). "National side selectors see "double"". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. p. 39.
  19. ↑ "Victorian win opens football carnival". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. 3 July 1958. p. 38.
  20. ↑ Alan Auldrige (8 July 1958). "It was so easy for the VFL". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. p. 44.
  21. ↑ Noel Carrick (10 July 1958). "Only 2 VFA players up to WA class". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. p. 36.
  22. ↑ "Down goes VFA". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. 12 July 1958. pp. 51–52.
  23. ↑ "VFA to end night matches". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. 8 May 1958. p. 51.
  24. ↑ Noel Carrick (29 September 1958). "Grand final in doubt". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. p. 44.
  25. ↑ "VFA replay at St Kilda". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. 30 September 1958. p. 43.
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