1966 VFL season

1966 VFL Premiership season
Teams	12
Premiers	St Kilda (1st premiership)
Minor premiers	Collingwood (13th minor premiership)
Consolation series	North Melbourne (2nd Consolation series win)
Matches played	112
Highest attendance	102,055
Coleman Medallist	Ted Fordham (Essendon)
Brownlow Medallist	Ian Stewart (St Kilda)
← 1965 1967 →

The 1966 Victorian Football League season was the 70th season of the elite Australian rules football competition.

Premiership season

In 1966, the VFL competition consisted of twelve teams of 18 on-the-field players each, plus two substitute players, known as the 19th man and the 20th 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 1966 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

1966 VFL Ladder
	TEAM	P	W	L	D	PF	PA	%	PTS
1	Collingwood	18	15	3	0	1687	1073	157.22	60
2	St Kilda (P)	18	14	4	0	1641	1149	142.82	56
3	Geelong	18	14	4	0	1599	1162	137.61	56
4	Essendon	18	14	4	0	1457	1204	121.01	56
5	Richmond	18	13	4	1	1626	1320	123.18	54
6	Carlton	18	10	8	0	1233	1143	107.87	40
7	North Melbourne	18	7	10	1	1294	1381	93.70	30
8	South Melbourne	18	7	11	0	1486	1505	98.74	28
9	Hawthorn	18	5	13	0	1224	1650	74.18	20
10	Footscray	18	4	14	0	1004	1458	68.86	16
11	Melbourne	18	3	15	0	1235	1580	78.16	12
12	Fitzroy	18	1	17	0	1004	1865	53.83	4
Key: P = Played, W = Won, L = Lost, D = Drawn, PF = Points for, PA = Points against

Night Series Competition

The night series were held under the floodlights at Lake Oval, South Melbourne, for the teams (5th to 12th on ladder) out of the finals at the end of the season.

Final: North Melbourne 20.12 (132) defeated Hawthorn 12.7 (79).

Premiership Finals

First Semi-Final

Team	1 Qtr	2 Qtr	3 Qtr	Final
Geelong	3.4	3.5	7.9	12.14 (86)
Essendon	6.1	10.5	13.6	15.6 (96)
Attendance: 93,765

Second Semi-Final

	Second Semi-final
10 September 2:30pm	Collingwood	def.	St Kilda	MCG (Crowd: 95,614)
	5.2 (32) 6.3 (39) 10.5 (65) 15.9 (99)	Q1 Q2 Q3 Final	0.1 (1) 6.5 (41) 10.9 (69) 13.11 (89)	Umpires: L. Perkins Television broadcast: Seven Network
Tuddenham 7 Searl, Wallis, Graham 2 Richardson, Price 1		Goals	3 Payze 2 Smith, Baldock, Neale 1 Mynott, Oakley, Cooper, Breen
Waters, Tuddenham, Wallis, Potter, K. Rose, Patterson, Clark, Montgomery, W. Richardson		Best	Murray, Morrow, Cooper, Breen, Smith, Payze, Griffiths, Synman

Preliminary Final

Team	1 Qtr	2 Qtr	3 Qtr	Final
St Kilda	4.1	10.2	10.2	15.4 (94)
Essendon	2.7	3.4	3.9	7.10 (52)
Attendance: 93,453

Grand Final

Team	1 Qtr	2 Qtr	3 Qtr	Final
Collingwood	2.1	5.7	7.11	10.13 (73)
St Kilda	2.5	5.6	8.9	10.14 (74)
Attendance: 102,055

Awards

• The 1966 VFL Premiership team was St. Kilda (its first, and to date, only premiership since the VFL's formation in 1897).
• The VFL's leading goalkicker was Ted Fordham of Essendon who kicked 76 goals (including 3 goals in the final series).
• The winner of the 1966 Brownlow Medal was Ian Stewart of St Kilda with 21 votes.
• Fitzroy took the "wooden spoon" in 1966.
• The reserves premiership was won by Richmond. Richmond 14.11 (95) defeated Collingwood 13.12 (90) in the Grand Final, held as a curtain-raiser to the seniors Grand Final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on 24 September.^[1]

Notable events

• At pre-season training in mid-April, at the behest of Collingwood coach Bob Rose, Collingwood club secretary Jack Burns informed Duncan Wright that his services are no longer required at Collingwood. (See Duncan Wright and John Somerville.)
• Richmond, under coach Tom Hafey, trained pre-season with Percy Cerutty at his facilities in Portsea, Victoria.
• In the Round 14 match between Carlton and Fitzroy, there was a once-off trial of a rule to ease congestion at centre bounces: a rectangle measuring 30yds goal-to-goal and 50yds wing-to-wing was drawn in the centre of the ground, and no more than four players from each team were permitted within the rectangle at a centre bounce.^[2] The rule was trialled again, with the area expanded to a 50yd square, during the Night Series,^[3] and it was eventually introduced as a permanent rule change in 1973.^[4]
• In Round 17, Fitzroy hosted its last senior VFL match at the Brunswick Street Oval, its home ground since 1883. A total of 612 VFL matches were played at the venue, including four finals games. Fitzroy began its nomadic journey of playing at various grounds over the next thirty years following its departure from Brunswick Street: Princes Park (twice), Junction Oval, Victoria Park, and Western (Whitten) Oval.
• After the home-and-away season was finished, Richmond's reserves and under-19s teams were stripped of any premiership points earned in matches in which they fielded Frank Loughran, an unregistered player from the Latrobe Valley. The reserves team, which went through the entire season undefeated, was stripped of twelve premiership points; it fell from first to second on the ladder, but still went on to win the premiership. The under-19s team was stripped of 28 premiership points, and dropped out of the final four as a result.^[5]
• At the end of the season South Melbourne's captain-coach, Bob Skilton, resigned as coach in the belief that he could do more for the club by continuing to lead the players on the field.

See also

• 1966 VFL Grand Final

References

1. Rex Pullen (26 September 1966). "Hart clinched Tigers' win". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne, VIC. p. 42.
2. Bob Crimeen (1 August 1966). "Angle on rectangle". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne, VIC. p. 42.
3. "New rules in night series". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne, VIC. 18 August 1966. p. 46.
4. "Rule changes 1858-2013". Australian Football League. Retrieved 8 February 2014.
5. "Richmond out of under-19 four". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne, VIC. 31 August 1966. p. 63.

• Hogan, P., The Tigers Of Old, The Richmond Football Club, (Richmond), 1996. ISBN 0-646-18748-1
• 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
• Strevens, S., Bob Rose: A Dignified Life, Allen & Unwin, (Crows Nest), 2004. ISBN 1-74114-465-5

External links

• 1966 Season - AFL Tables