1915 VFL season

On 16 October 1914, three weeks after the end of the 1914 season, the University Football Club dropped out of the VFL and folded.

The reasons given for this decision were:

• Firstly, after three promising seasons in 1908–1910, University had become very uncompetitive, finishing last in 1911–1914, and losing its last 51 consecutive matches.
• Secondly, since the players' primary focus was on their studies rather than football, particularly during mid-year examinations, the club found it difficult to maintain a constant lineup.[1]
• Thirdly, since University's admission to the VFL in 1908, player payments in the VFL had become commonplace and were officially permitted from 1911, whereas University chose to remain a fully amateur club drawing solely from university students,[2] which had caused a number of players to defect to other clubs.

As such, both the club and the VFL had realised it would be virtually impossible for University to become viable and/or competitive in an increasingly professional competition.

Despite the outbreak of World War I eleven weeks earlier, the war was not given as a contributing factor in University's decision, especially as the conflict was not, at the time, expected to escalate to the extent it did.[1]

Following University's dissolution, players who wished to continue playing in the VFL were all cleared to Melbourne through an informal arrangement beneficial to both clubs:[3] University wished to see its best players playing together in the same VFL club to retain the strength of its own team for intervarsity competition,[1] and Melbourne, which had mostly struggled since its 1900 premiership due to the lack of a natural recruiting district (formal zoning was not introduced until the following year), gained exclusive access to a valuable source of recruits.[2] Among those who transferred from University to Melbourne were Jack Brake, Claude Bryan, Jack Doubleday, Dick Gibbs, Roy Park, and Percy Rodriguez.[3][4][5]

With the VFL being reduced to nine clubs, a bye was required in the fixture for the first time in the league's history.

The University club reformed in 1919, and continues to play amateur football in the Victorian Amateur Football Association to this day.

In 1915, the VFL competition consisted of nine 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 18 rounds (i.e., 16 matches and 2 byes).

Once the 18 round home-and-away season had finished, the 1915 VFL Premiers were determined by the specific format and conventions of the amended "Argus system".

All of the 1915 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.

Carlton defeated Collingwood 11.12 (78) to 6.9 (45), in front of a crowd of 39,343 people. (For an explanation of scoring see Australian rules football).

• The 1915 VFL Premiership team was Carlton.
• The VFL's leading goalkicker were Dick Lee of Collingwood and Jimmy Freake of Fitzroy with 66 goals each.
• Geelong took the "wooden spoon" in 1915.

• Prior to the season, VFL delegates voted in favour of rule changes to bring the game closer to a hybridisation of Australian rules football and rugby league: specifically the addition of a crossbar to the goal posts over which goals were to be kicked, disallowing forward handpasses, and rules to allow stronger rugby-style tackling between the shoulders and the hips.[6][7] The rules could not come into immediate effect as they required approval at a vote of Australasian Football Council delegates, and this vote never took place due to the war,[8] so none of these changes were ever implemented.
• The first round of the 1915 was played on Saturday 24 April 1915, one day before the forces of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed at ANZAC Cove in their first hostile action in World War I.
• St Kilda changed its traditional colours of red, white, and black, the colours of the enemy (the German Empire) to red, yellow, and black, the colours of a trusted ally (The Kingdom of Belgium).[9][10]
• On 12 March 1915, responding to intense public pressure, a motion was put to a VFL meeting (proposed by the Geelong delegate, seconded by the Melbourne delegate) to suspend the VFL competition for the entire season (in March 1915, nobody expected the war to last for as long as it did). The votes were Geelong, Melbourne, Essendon, St Kilda, and South Melbourne "for", and the inner-Melbourne clubs of Carlton, Fitzroy, Collingwood, and Richmond "against". In the absence of the required three-quarters majority, the motion was lost.[9]
• At the instigation of the SAFL, interstate matches were suspended.[9]
• At 2:00PM on Saturday 29 May 1915, Essendon centreman and 1914 Victorian State wingman, Cyril Gove, rode the racehorse Menthe into third place in the Springbank Corinthian Handicap. a race for amateur riders,[11] at Moonee Valley Racecourse. Immediately the race was over, he caught a fast cab down Mount Alexander Road, Melbourne to the East Melbourne Cricket Ground, where he played a full game for Essendon in its round 6 match against South Melbourne.[12][13]

• 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

• 1915 Season - AFL Tables