The 1958 VFL season was the 62nd season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season, contested by twelve clubs, ran from 12 April until 20 September, and comprised an 18-game home-and-away season, followed by a finals series involving the top four clubs.
In 1958, 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 but, once substituted, that 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, with matches 12 to 18 being the "home-and-way reverse" of matches 1 to 7.
Once the 18 round home-and-away season had finished, the 1958 VFL Premiership team was determined by the format and conventions of the Page–McIntyre finals system.
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.
On Monday 2 June 1958, following his superb performance in Footscray's unexpected round 8 fifteen-point victory over Essendon, Sun News Pictorial journalist Rex Pullen christens Ted Whitten "Mr. Football".
The game between Melbourne and Collingwood on the Queen's Birthday public holiday drew a crowd of 99,256, which remains as the highest attendance for a home-and-away game in VFL/AFL history as of 2025.
The sixteen match 1958 Australian National Football (ANFC) Carnival is held in Melbourne during a two-week break in the VFL competition, between rounds 12 and 13. ANFC President, Pat Rodriguez, remarked that the total attendance of 90,261 spectators at the sixteen matches was an insult to the rest of Australia by the Victorian football community.
In the last moments of the third quarter of the round 16 match between South Melbourne and St Kilda, South Melbourne winger Ian Tampion received a free kick. The siren went and Tampion, thinking that he was too far away from the goal to score, gave the ball the field umpire, Bill Barbour, and went to join the three-quarter-time South Melbourne team huddle. South Melbourne captain-coach, Ron Clegg, insisted that he "have a go" and not waste the chance. Tampion retrieved the ball from the umpire and kicked an 80-yard (73m) drop-kick that scored a goal, travelling over the heads of the St Kilda defenders, who had moved up the field towards him, not expecting him to be able to kick such a distance.
Immediately after the round 18 matches were finished on Saturday 23 August, the evening newspaper The Sporting Globe announced that Neil Roberts, of St Kilda, was the winner of its Haydn Bunton Memorial Medal. The medal came with a cash prize of £100 and, by accepting the prize, Roberts, who up to that time had played as an amateur, turned professional.
Therefore, although playing the entire 1958 season as an "amateur", as did Don Cordner in 1946 and John Schultz in 1960, unlike both Cordner and Schultz, he was a professional when the winner of the Brownlow Medal was announced on Tuesday, 26 August.
Collingwood caused a Grand Final upset by unexpectedly thwarting Melbourne's attempt to equal Collingwood's record of four premierships in a row, from 1927 to 1930.
In order to increase the sales of the VFL's Football Record which, in addition to the selected player lists, also listed the number that each player would carry on the back of their club guernsey, the Grand Final teams (Collingwood and Melbourne) were ordered to change the "regular" (i.e. registered with the VFL) playing numbers for each player for that specific match, and only for that match. Unless one is aware that the numbers on the back of players' guernseys on that day did not correspond to the numbers they wore in every other match, one can be confused when viewing photographs or films of the game, or when looking at other references relating to that match, such as the Football Record.
(a) had no connection with the position on the field that the individual occupied in any particular match,
(b) was issued by the player's football club prior to their first match with that club, and was then registered against that player's name, by the VFL,
(c) usually remained unchanged throughout a player's career with that club, and
(d) was often, as was the case of Ron Barassi's number 31, retained by a player when he transferred from one team to another.
(a) to (d) remain the convention with the AFL.
The reason for the last-minute move by the VFL to alter players normal numbers for the Grand Final was to nullify an attempt by university students to reduce VFL's income stream by issuing free team sheets – containing the Grand Final players' names, their (regular) guernsey numbers, and their official selected team positions (as announced on the Thursday evening prior to the match) – outside the Melbourne Cricket Ground on the day of the match.
Geelong won the "wooden spoon" in 1958. As of 2024[update], it is Geelong's most recent wooden spoon, meaning that the club has the longest "spoon drought" in the VFL/AFL.
References
Rogers, S. & Brown, A., Every Game Ever Played: VFL/AFL Results 1897–1997 (Sixth Edition), Viking Books, (Ringwood), 1998. ISBN0-670-90809-6
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. ISBN0-670-86814-0
Known as the Victorian Football League from 1897–1989; no grand finals were held in 1897 and 1924
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