Albert Park Football Club (VFA)

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Albert Park Football Club
Names
Full nameAlbert Park Football Club
Nickname(s)Parkites, Hillites
Club details
Founded1867
Dissolved1880
Colours  White   Red
CompetitionUnaffiliated until 1876
Victorian Football Association (1877–1879)
Premierships Challenge Cup: 1870 (disputed)
Ground(s)Emerald Hill Ground

Albert Park Football Club (historically styled as Albert-park) was a 19th-century Australian rules football club based in the Melbourne suburb of Albert Park. The club was one of main first-rate senior football clubs during the unaffiliated era of Victorian football.

The club was established as the South Melbourne Football Club in May 1867. [1] It changed its name to Emerald-hill in April 1868, [2] then to Albert-park in May 1869. [3] It played its home games at the Emerald-hill Ground. [4]

The club quickly became one of the main senior clubs competing at the time. The best performance in its history was in the 1870 season; it was undefeated, but it finished second for the premiership behind Melbourne, which was also undefeated. [5]

The club also claimed the South Yarra Presentation Challenge Cup during the 1870 season, although the claim was disputed by the other clubs: rules required that a club was to win four cup matches without loss to claim permanent ownership of the Cup, but the other clubs disputed Albert-park's right to claim walkover victory against Railway when the latter club declined to play a scheduled game due to insufficient players turning up. [6] In claiming the walkover, Albert-park players took to the field against no opposition and scored two goals, in a similar manner to the traditional ceremony of an unopposed horse "walking over" the track to claim a walkover victory – something one sportswriter described at the time as "simply absurd and unprecedented," [7] but which later became common practice in the event of such a forfeiture. [8] [9]

In 1876, the club entered an amalgamation with North Melbourne, but the amalgamation ended one year later when North Melbourne was re-established as an independent club under the name 'Hotham'. [10] In 1877, Albert-park was an inaugural senior member of the Victorian Football Association.

In 1880, Albert-park amalgamated with the neighbouring South Melbourne, which had joined the VFA as a senior club in 1879, to create a new club which carried on South Melbourne's name but retained Albert-park's red and white colours. The merged club went on to dominate metropolitan football during the 1880s, winning five premierships in ten years, and exists today as the professional Sydney Swans club in the Australian Football League. [11]

A newer, unrelated club called the Albert Park Football Club competes today in the Victorian Amateur Football Association.

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Australian rules football was first organised in Victoria in 1859 when its rules were codified by the Melbourne Football Club.

The 1877 Victorian Football Association season was the first in which the Australian rules football competition in Victoria was run under a properly constituted administrative body. The Association was formed with the view to governing the sport via a collective body, made up of delegates representing the clubs. It was the second such body to have been formed; the South Australian National Football League having been formed just 17 days prior to the VFA.

The 1878 Victorian Football Association season was the second season of the Australian rules football competition. The premiership was won by the Geelong Football Club, after it defeated Melbourne in a playoff match on 5 October. It was the club's first VFA premiership, and the first in a sequence of three consecutive premierships won from 1878 to 1880. Geelong was unbeaten during the year.

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The 1876 Victorian football season was an Australian rules football competition played during the winter of 1876. The season consisted of matches between metropolitan and provincial football clubs in the colony of Victoria. The premier metropolitan club was Melbourne, and the premier provincial club was Barwon.

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References

  1. ↑ "Thursday, 23 May 1867". The Argus. Melbourne, VIC. 23 May 1867. p. 5.
  2. ↑ "Thursday, 23 April 1868". The Argus. Melbourne, VIC. 23 April 1868. p. 5.
  3. ↑ "Football". The Australasian. Vol. VI, no. 162. Melbourne, VIC. 8 May 1869. pp. 588–589.
  4. ↑ "Football". The Australasian. Vol. IX, no. 224. Melbourne, VIC. 16 July 1870. p. 43.
  5. ↑ Fair Play (23 October 1870). "Football – retrospect of the season". The Australasian. Vol. IX, no. 238. Melbourne, VIC. p. 524.
  6. ↑ Fair Play (13 August 1870). "Football chatter". The Australasian. Vol. IX, no. 228. Melbourne, VIC. p. 204.
  7. ↑ "Football". Leader. 6 August 1870. p. 10.
  8. ↑ "Williamstown v. Brunswick". Williamstown Chronicle. Williamstown, VIC. 7 July 1900. p. 3.
  9. ↑ "Walk-over match". The Argus. Melbourne, VIC. 12 June 1911. p. 6.
  10. ↑ Peter Pindar (7 October 1876). "The Football Season of 1876 – Part 1". The Australasian. Vol. XXI, no. 549. Melbourne, VIC. p. 460.
  11. ↑ "Chapter four – Sydney or bust: the South Melbourne Football Club's 1981 relocation saga" (PDF). p. 111. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 June 2015. Retrieved 18 October 2014.
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