1899 VFL season


The 1899 VFL season was the third season of the Victorian Football League, the highest-level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured eight clubs and ran from 13 May to 16 September, comprising a 14-round home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring all eight clubs.
won the premiership, defeating by one point in the 1899 VFL grand final; it was Fitzroy's second VFL premiership. Fitzroy also won the minor premiership by finishing atop the home-and-away ladder with an 11–3 win–loss record. 's Eddy James won his second leading goalkicker medal as the league's leading goalkicker.

Background

In 1899, the VFL competition consisted of eight teams of 18 on-the-field players each, with no "reserves".
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 finals system.

Home-and-away season

Round 8

Ladder


Premiers
Section A
Section B

Finals series

Sectional rounds

Section A ladder


Section B ladder


Grand final

Starting time is local time. Source:

Win–loss table

The following table can be sorted from biggest winning margin to biggest losing margin for each round. If two or more matches in a round are decided by the same margin, these margins are sorted by percentage. Opponents are listed above the margins and home matches are in bold.
Source:

Season notes

  • The VFL reduced the size of its teams from 20 to 18 on-the-field players, with no "reserves". In doing this, the number of followers was reduced from five to three.
  • The first seven kicks of the round 14 game between Carlton and Fitzroy were free kicks awarded by the umpire.
  • In the third sectional round, Geelong set records for the highest score in a game, scoring 23.24, and the highest winning margin of 161 points, against St Kilda. These records both stood for twelve years and twenty years respectively.
  • St Kilda's score of 0.1 in the same match set the record for the lowest score in a VFL/AFL game, which has neither been matched nor broken since. Notably, St Kilda's solitary behind was actually the first score of the match.
  • Geelong's Jim McShane kicked 11 goals in the same match against St Kilda, a VFL record that was not equalled until Collingwood's Dick Lee's 11 goals in 1914 and not broken until 1922.
  • At the end of the 1899 season, in the process of naming his own "champion player", the football correspondent for The Argus, selected a team of the best players of the 1899 VFL competition:
Backs: Maurie Collins, Bill Proudfoot, Peter Burns ; Halfbacks: Pat Hickey, George Davidson, Alf Wood ; Centres: Fred Leach, Firth McCallum, Harry Wright ; Wings: Charlie Pannam, Eddie Drohan, Herb Howson ; Forwards: Bill Jackson, Eddy James, Charlie Colgan ; Ruck: Mick Pleass, Frank Hailwood, Joe McShane ; Rovers: Dick Condon, Bill McSpeerin, Teddy Rankin.
From those he considered to be the three best players — that is, Condon, Hickey, and Pleass — he selected Pat Hickey as his "champion player" of the season..

Awards