| 1990 VFA season | |
|---|---|
| Overview | |
| Teams | 14 |
| Premiers | Williamstown 12th premiership |
| Minor premiers | Preston 7th minor premiership |
| J. J. Liston Trophy | Matt Burrow (Preston – 14 votes) Joey Garbuio (Oakleigh – 14 votes) Steve Harkins (Port Melbourne – 14 votes) Stuart Nicol (Springvale – 14 votes) |
| Leading goalkicker | Jamie Shaw (Preston – 103 goals) |
The 1990 VFA season was the 109th season of the Victorian Football Association (VFA), an Australian rules football competition played in the state of Victoria. [1]
The premiership was won by the Williamstown Football Club, after it defeated Springvale in the grand final on 30 September by two points; it was Williamstown's twelfth top-division premiership.
After enduring financial difficulties consistently since the early 1980s, the future of the Brunswick Football Club was uncertain at the end of the 1989 season. Its financial position was weak, its facilities at Gillon Oval were of increasingly poor quality, and it had only 300 members. [2] At a special meeting on 2 October 1989, the club met to decide on its future, and by a large margin it decided to enter a merger with the Broadmeadows Football Club; rejected options were continuing in the VFA as a stand-alone club, folding, or merging with Sunshine. [3] Under the terms of the merger, the new club was known as the Brunswick-Broadmeadows Magpies. It remained based at Gillon Oval, as Broadmeadows did not yet have its own home ground.
The Broadmeadows Football Club, known as the Falcons, was a club at an administrative level only. Its executive committee was established in 1987, and it had the support of the Broadmeadows council to develop a new Association-standard venue at the Johnstone Street Reserve, Jacana; but in the three years it had existed, it had never fielded a team in any suburban competition, and it did not have an existing home ground. The club was built entirely around its aspirations to play in the Association, and had made an unsuccessful bid to join for the 1988 season. [4]
The Brunswick-Broadmeadows merger was not a successful venture. Its huge board, which comprised seven former Brunswick committeemen and seven former Broadmeadows committeemen, suffered throughout the year from factional fighting which limited its ability to operate effectively as a unified club. As a result, the club was unable to meaningfully address its debt problems during the year, it failed to meet its financial reporting commitments to the Association, and several committeemen and the general manager resigned from the club as a result of the board's ineffectiveness. On 1 August, the Association intervened; it sacked the club's board, and Association executive director Athol Hodgetts was appointed as the club's administrator. [5] [6] Hodgetts returned the club to a new board in September, but the club was still more than $250,000 in debt and at risk of Broadmeadows withdrawing from the merger. [7] It was the beginning of the end for the club, which did not survive in the Association to the end of 1991. [8]
After having withdrawn is senior and reserves teams midway through the 1989 season, Sunshine intended to regroup and return to the Association in 1990. Although the club believed it had restored a financial position stronger than at least five other struggling clubs in the competition, it appeared unlikely that the club would be permitted to continue as a stand-alone entity, so it proposed a merger with Brunswick to form a new club which would have been known as the Sunshine Magpies; but, on 2 October, Brunswick voted instead to merge with Broadmeadows. [9] A new opportunity for the club's survival emerged on 3 October, when it was announced that League clubs Fitzroy and Footscray were merging, with the new Fitzroy Bulldogs club to play at Princes Park, North Carlton; [10] this temporarily made Sunshine the only League or Association football team remaining in the inner western suburbs, giving it the chance to win over former Footscray fans, or enter a partnership with a new Footscray-based Association club; [11] however, there was a strong and successful fightback campaign from local residents and businesses which not only kept Footscray as an independent League club, but also drew attention and local support away from Sunshine's efforts to consolidate its own viability. On 25 October, two days after the Fitzroy Bulldogs merger collapsed, the Association terminated Sunshine's licence. [9] The club continued preparations for the 1990 season in the hope that it could convince the Association to change its mind, [12] but this did not happen, bringing an end to Sunshine's 31-year stint in the competition.
In the home-and-away season, each team played eighteen games; the top five then contested the finals under the McIntyre final five system. The primary finals venue was North Port Oval, and the grand final was played at Princes Park.
| Pos | Team | Pld | W | L | D | PF | PA | PP | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Preston | 18 | 13 | 4 | 1 | 2188 | 1774 | 123.3 | 54 |
| 2 | Springvale | 18 | 13 | 5 | 0 | 2214 | 1828 | 121.1 | 52 |
| 3 | Coburg | 18 | 13 | 5 | 0 | 2105 | 1760 | 119.6 | 52 |
| 4 | Williamstown (P) | 18 | 12 | 6 | 0 | 2130 | 1539 | 138.4 | 48 |
| 5 | Werribee | 18 | 12 | 6 | 0 | 2257 | 1823 | 123.8 | 48 |
| 6 | Dandenong | 18 | 10 | 7 | 1 | 2122 | 1678 | 126.5 | 42 |
| 7 | Frankston | 18 | 10 | 8 | 0 | 2077 | 1988 | 104.5 | 40 |
| 8 | Sandringham | 18 | 9 | 9 | 0 | 2154 | 2200 | 97.9 | 36 |
| 9 | Box Hill | 18 | 8 | 10 | 0 | 2242 | 2142 | 104.7 | 32 |
| 10 | Brunswick-Broadmeadows | 18 | 8 | 10 | 0 | 1867 | 1856 | 100.6 | 32 |
| 11 | Port Melbourne | 18 | 8 | 10 | 0 | 2026 | 2247 | 90.2 | 32 |
| 12 | Prahran | 18 | 5 | 13 | 0 | 1775 | 2148 | 82.6 | 20 |
| 13 | Oakleigh | 18 | 4 | 14 | 0 | 1936 | 2460 | 78.7 | 16 |
| 14 | Camberwell | 18 | 0 | 18 | 0 | 1330 | 3010 | 44.2 | 0 |
| Qualifying final | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saturday, 1 September | Springvale 23.19 (157) | def. | Coburg 12.12 (84) | North Port Oval (crowd: 4,000) | [14] |
| Elimination Final | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sunday, 2 September | Williamstown 23.17 (155) | def. | Werribee 16.14 (110) | North Port Oval (crowd: 4,523) | [15] |
| First semi-final | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saturday, 8 September | Coburg 8.12 (60) | def. by | Williamstown 14.21 (105) | North Port Oval (crowd: 4,924) | [16] |
| Second semi-final | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sunday, 9 September | Preston 9.11 (65) | def. by | Springvale 24.15 (159) | North Port Oval (crowd: 3,533) | [16] |
| Preliminary Final | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sunday, 16 September | Preston 15.6 (96) | def. by | Williamstown 23.15 (153) | North Port Oval (crowd: 7,494) | [17] |
| 1990 VFA Grand Final | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sunday, 30 September | Springvale | def. by | Williamstown | Princes Park (crowd: 18,634) | [18] |
| 2.5 (17) 8.11 (59) 13.15 (93) 15.15 (105) | Q1 Q2 Q3 Final | 5.4 (34) 6.4 (40) 10.5 (65) 16.11 (107) | Umpires: B. Bulluss, J. Russo Norm Goss Memorial Medal: Barry Round (Williamstown) | ||
| Robinson 4, Maloni 3, Dempster 2, Dudley 2, Phillips 2, Jeffs, Maylin | Goals | Rickman 4, Johansen 3, Minett 3, Aziz, Gould, Muschialli, O'Connor, Smith, Swan | |||
| Meade (concussion) Phillips (unspecified) | Injuries | ||||
The Association played one interleague match, against the Australian Capital Territory, during the 1990 season. Phil Cleary (Coburg) was coach of the Association team, and Brett McTaggart (Williamstown) was captain. [19]
| 1990 Interleague matches | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sunday, 10 June | A.C.T. 13.14 (92) | def. by | V.F.A. 21.11 (137) | Football Park, Phillip (crowd: 5,000) | [20] |