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Results and statistics for the Victorian Football League season of 1899.

Premiership season

In 1899, the VFL competition consisted of eight 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 14 rounds.

Once the 14 round home-and-away season had finished, the 1899 VFL Premiers were determined by the specific format and conventions of the 1898 VFL Premiership 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

Home and away ladder

All teams played 14 games during the home and away season, for a total of 56. A sectional round of 3 games per team was then played, for a total of 12. The finals series consisted only of the grand final.

Finals

Sectional Round 1

Sectional Round 2

Sectional Round 3

Section A ladder

Section B ladder

Grand final

Fitzroy defeated South Melbourne 3.9 (27) to 3.8 (26). (For an explanation of scoring see Australian rules football).

Attendance: 4,823 at Lake Oval

Awards

• The 1899 VFL Premiership team was Fitzroy.
• The VFL's leading goalkicker was Eddy James of Geelong with 31 goals.
• The Argus newspaper's "Player of the Year" was Fitzroy's Pat Hickey.

Notable events

• The VFL reduced the size of its teams to 18 on-the-field players, with no "reserves".
• Norman "Hackenschmidt" Clark, a footballer with the North Adelaide Football Club in the South Australian Football Association, wins the 1899, 130-yard Stawell Gift in eleven and four-fifths seconds, off a handicap of 14 and a half yards. Clark would later play 125 senior games for Carlton (1905-1912), and captain-coach Brighton Football Club (1913), and coach Carlton (1914-1918; 1920-1922), North Melbourne (1924; 1931), Richmond (1919), and St Kilda (1925-1926).
• In the third sectional round, Geelong set records for (a) highest score in a game, scoring 23.24 (162), and (b) winning margin of 161 points, against St Kilda. These records would both stand for twenty years.
• Geelong's Jim McShane kicks 11 goals in the match against St Kilda. A VFL record that was not equalled until Collingwood's Dick Lee's 11 goals in 1914.
• St Kilda's score of 0.1 (1) in the same match set the record for the lowest score in a VFL/AFL game, which has neither been matched nor broken since.
• The third round, Queen's Birthday holiday match, between Collingwood and St Kilda at Victoria Park was held in the morning of Wednesday 24 May 1899.
• Warwick Armstrong (6'3", 190 cm), later captain of the Australian Test Cricket team, plays in the ruck for the South Melbourne team that lost the 1899 "Grand Final".

References

• 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

• 1899 Season - AFL Tables