The 1966 VFL season was the 70th season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs, ran from 23 April until 24 September, and comprised an 18-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top four clubs.
The premiership was won by the St Kilda Football Club, after it defeated Collingwood by one point in the VFL Grand Final. It was St Kilda's first, and to date only premiership, making it the last of the eight foundation clubs to win a premiership.
Background
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.
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.
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]
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.
Awards
The 1966 VFL Premiership team was St. Kilda (its first, and to date, only premiership since the VFL's formation in 1897).
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.[6]
↑"Richmond out of under-19 four". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. 31 August 1966. p.63.
↑Rex Pullen (26 September 1966). "Hart clinched Tigers' win". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. p.42.
Hogan, P., The Tigers of Old, The Richmond Football Club, (Richmond), 1996. ISBN0-646-18748-1
Maplestone, M., Flying Higher: History of the Essendon Football Club 1872–1996, Essendon Football Club, (Melbourne), 1996. ISBN0-9591740-2-8
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
Strevens, S., Bob Rose: A Dignified Life, Allen & Unwin, (Crows Nest), 2004. ISBN1-74114-465-5
Known as the Victorian Football League from 1897–1989; no grand finals were held in 1897 and 1924
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