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1933 VFL Premiership season
Bob Pratt kicked 109 goals (inc. finals)
Teams	12
Premiers	South Melbourne (3rd premiership)
Minor premiers	Richmond (2nd minor premiership)
Matches played	112
Highest attendance	75,754
Leading Goalkicker Medallist	Gordon Coventry (Collingwood)
Brownlow Medallist	Wilfred Smallhorn (Fitzroy)
← 1932 1934 →

The 1933 Victorian Football League season was the 37th season of the elite Australian rules football competition.

Premiership season

In 1933, 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 1933 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

Finals

Semi finals

Preliminary Final

Grand final

South Melbourne defeated Richmond 9.17 (71) to 4.5 (29), in front of a crowd of 75,754 people. (For an explanation of scoring see Australian rules football).

Awards

• The 1933 VFL Premiership team was South Melbourne.


• The VFL's leading goalkicker was Gordon Coventry of Collingwood with 108 goals.


• The winner of the 1933 Brownlow Medal was Wilfred Smallhorn of Fitzroy with 18 votes.


• 
  Essendon took the "wooden spoon" in 1933.


• The seconds premiership was won by Melbourne for the third consecutive season. Melbourne 10.15 (75) defeated St Kilda 10.14 (74) in the Grand Final, played as a stand-alone game on Thursday 28 September (Show Day holiday) at the Melbourne Cricket Ground before a crowd of 9,500.^[1]

Notable events

• 
  "Checker" Hughes took over as coach of Melbourne. He renamed the team "The Demons" from "The Fuchsias."


• In Round 5, St Kilda defeated North Melbourne 13.19 (97) to 11.17 (83), despite having only 15 players left at the end of a brutal match, which was stopped at one stage because a wild brawl, instigated by the North Melbourne players, had erupted in the centre.
  
  • St Kilda captain Clarrie Hindson had a broken ankle, full-forward Bill Mohr had two broken ribs, forward Jack Anderson had been knocked unconscious, centreman W.C. "Billy" Roberts was felled once, recovered, and then was felled a second time, and rover Roy "Tiger" Bence was also knocked out.
  
  
  • The St Kilda President, Gallipoli veteran and naval war hero Commander Fred Arlington-Burke, described St Kilda's 15 man victory as the greatest moral victory in the club's history, and a "Badge of Courage" was struck by the Football Club and was awarded to each of the players that took part in the match.
  
  
  • The medallion is silver, coin shaped, with coin-like reeding around its outer perimeter (with no cicumferential milling), with a St Kilda Football Club badge affixed to it, and the following inscription: "St KILDA DEFEATED Nth MELBOURNE WITH 15 MEN MAY 27th 1933". (Photograph of Medal at Ross, 1996, p. 140)
  
  


• In Round 8, Essendon experimented with a siren, rather than a bell at Windy Hill.


• In the 1933 Interstate Carnival, held in Sydney, the Victorian team won all five of its matches.


• During the 1933 Carnival, the Australian National Football Council considered a proposal from the New South Wales Rugby Football League that the two codes merge and play a single, Australian "national" game. A secret trial match of this proposed "national" game, conducted during the carnival, was unsuccessful. The ANFC subsequently rejected the proposal.


• The President of the South Melbourne Football Club, grocery magnate Archie Crofts, had brought so many interstate players to South Melbourne — with the promise of a well-paid regular job in one of the Crofts Grocery chain stores in addition to their receiving maximum playing and training fees allowable under the "Coulter Law" — that the 1933 team was christened "The Foreign Legion". Those comprising the "Foreign Legion" were Bert Beard, John Bowe, Brighton Diggins, Bill Faul, and Jim O'Meara from Western Australia, Ossie Bertram, Wilbur Harris, and Jack Wade from South Australia, and Frank Davies and Laurie Nash from Tasmania. South Melbourne played in four consecutive Grand Finals from 1933–1936, but won only the 1933 premiership.


• 
  North Melbourne's win over Collingwood in Round 6 was the first by one of the three 1925 entrants (Footscray, Hawthorn, North Melbourne) over the Magpies. Prior to that, Collingwood had won the first 37 meetings against the three newest clubs. Footscray's first win over Collingwood came in Round 9 of this year, but Hawthorn would not record its first win over Collingwood until Round 5 of the 1942 VFL season (in the 30th regular-season meeting between the two clubs).

See also

• List of VFL debuts in 1933

Footnotes

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

• 1933 Season - AFL Tables


• 
  1933 - Round 5 St Kilda v North Melbourne - 15 men defeat 18 - BoylesFootballPhotos


• 
  1933 ANFC Sydney Carnival - BoylesFootballPhotos


• Full Points Footy: 1933 Sydney Carnival