Hypotehical. What if the VFL didn't expand in 1925...

[mianfei]

I’ve never seen this question asked before, but I would suspect assuming no large-scale mergers between the VFL and VFA:

1. The VFL would have been less regulated because there would have been less need to support struggling clubs during the depression without having to bail out Hawthorn and North Melbourne with special loans in 1935
   • No Coulter Law, gate revenue sharing or finals revenue sharing in the 1940s and 1950s
   • St. Kilda would not have become a power in the 1960s and may not have moved to Moorabbin
   • St. Kilda would have become as vulnerable as South Melbourne and Fitzroy were to European immigrants with no interest in local football clubs, so St. Kilda might have relocated as well as South and Fitzroy
   • Fewer players lost from the big clubs to the VFA in the late 1930s and 1940s (e.g. Ron Todd stays with Collingwood when not on war service)
2. Carlton, Collingwood and Richmond would still have dominated the competition as the VFL expansion occurred when these clubs were becoming a “Big Three” via their industrial and political patronage wealth (see Up Where Cazaly?)
3. Essendon would have remained a consistent power by taking the great majority of North Melbourne’s supporter base
4. Richmond and Melbourne (to a lesser extent Carlton and Collingwood) would very largely have taken over Hawthorn’s supporter base in the Eastern Suburbs.
   • Most football fans in the eastern suburbs between 1925 and 1953 had no interest in Hawthorn but either
   1. Followed one of the to-be “Big Three” (Carlton, Collingwood, Richmond) as clubs professional insofar as the League would allow or
   2. adhered strongly to the “amateur ideal” and followed the VAFA and/or local leagues
5. Richmond would have moved to Waverley not the MCG as Waverley lay near a large concentration of Tiger players (Cities of Waverley and Knox were in the Richmond metropolitan zone) and supporters
   • Because even when Hawthorn became successful Richmond possessed a much larger following, especially latent following, than Hawthorn:
     1. The Tigers would have made Waverley Park much more viable in the long term than did Hawthorn.
     2. this would delay ground rationalisation, especially with fewer restraints on finances for clubs to improve their own venues
     3. Waverley Park might thus still be an AFL venue today even with ground rationalisation and the relocation of South, Fitzroy and also St. Kilda

Interesting point. I guess the extra clubs added to the prosperity of the entire league, which built it up to the point it could expand nationwide. You kind of get the feeling the VFA wouldn’t have lasted anyway, I mean there is really only room for one top-tier football league in Victoria. If the two were in “proper” direct competition with each other, which would've been likely the case if those three clubs stayed in the VFA, one would have folded eventually ala ABA/NBA.

Footscray alone stands relevant here: it was the richest VFA club with substantial corporate backing and had possessed potential as a VFL club even in 1897 exceeding St. Kilda, and in 1908 exceeding University and equalling Richmond. However, it is clear Footscray never submitted an application to join the League in either 1896 or 1907. Indeed, I am sure Footscray never even considered submitting such an application without having any idea why.

Had there been no 1925 expansion, Footscray would have continued to dominate the VFA – especially if the VFA had pushed through its own relatively forgotten expansion (Preston, Oakleigh, Sandringham, Camberwell) before the League did. This would no doubt have put more pressure either for further VFA expansion in the western suburbs (which were not growing nearly as much as the eastern suburbs) or for the VFL to expand to counter the growth in the VFA.

The effects of VFA expansion occurring before VFL expansion in the 1920s are a huge wild card that would take another forum to discuss.

North Melbourne – despite its record 49-straight sequence in the 1910s – was a declining club after its failure to join the League in 1907 and 1921 cost it much support. Hawthorn was a mid-table club in the early 1920s VFA. However, along with Prahran and Brighton, Hawthorn would almost certainly have been one of the Association’s poorest clubs financially for the two related reasons of being located in a middle-class region far from industrial wealth, and large-scale donations to sport being blocked by dominance of the “amateur ideal” amongst these sections of society. Thus, it would have made little difference if North and/or Hawthorn had stayed in the VFA, apart from producing a less regulated VFL as noted in (1) above.

 

[Pessimistic]

My favourite ‘what if’ was what if all of australia preferred one code, not afl or rugby like now

Eventually there would be a national league but totally dominated by NSW and Victoria.

Other states would have a team each at most, and competitive if they were lucky

 

[Pessimistic]

I’ve never seen this question asked before, but I would suspect assuming no large-scale mergers between the VFL and VFA:

1. The VFL would have been less regulated because there would have been less need to support struggling clubs during the depression without having to bail out Hawthorn and North Melbourne with special loans in 1935
   • No Coulter Law, gate revenue sharing or finals revenue sharing in the 1940s and 1950s
   • St. Kilda would not have become a power in the 1960s and may not have moved to Moorabbin
   • St. Kilda would have become as vulnerable as South Melbourne and Fitzroy were to European immigrants with no interest in local football clubs, so St. Kilda might have relocated as well as South and Fitzroy
   • Fewer players lost from the big clubs to the VFA in the late 1930s and 1940s (e.g. Ron Todd stays with Collingwood when not on war service)
2. Carlton, Collingwood and Richmond would still have dominated the competition as the VFL expansion occurred when these clubs were becoming a “Big Three” via their industrial and political patronage wealth (see Up Where Cazaly?)
3. Essendon would have remained a consistent power by taking the great majority of North Melbourne’s supporter base
4. Richmond and Melbourne (to a lesser extent Carlton and Collingwood) would very largely have taken over Hawthorn’s supporter base in the Eastern Suburbs.
   • Most football fans in the eastern suburbs between 1925 and 1953 had no interest in Hawthorn but either
   1. Followed one of the to-be “Big Three” (Carlton, Collingwood, Richmond) as clubs professional insofar as the League would allow or
   2. adhered strongly to the “amateur ideal” and followed the VAFA and/or local leagues
5. Richmond would have moved to Waverley not the MCG as Waverley lay near a large concentration of Tiger players (Cities of Waverley and Knox were in the Richmond metropolitan zone) and supporters
   • Because even when Hawthorn became successful Richmond possessed a much larger following, especially latent following, than Hawthorn:
     1. The Tigers would have made Waverley Park much more viable in the long term than did Hawthorn.
     2. this would delay ground rationalisation, especially with fewer restraints on finances for clubs to improve their own venues
     3. Waverley Park might thus still be an AFL venue today even with ground rationalisation and the relocation of South, Fitzroy and also St. Kilda

Footscray alone stands relevant here: it was the richest VFA club with substantial corporate backing and had possessed potential as a VFL club even in 1897 exceeding St. Kilda, and in 1908 exceeding University and equalling Richmond. However, it is clear Footscray never submitted an application to join the League in either 1896 or 1907. Indeed, I am sure Footscray never even considered submitting such an application without having any idea why.

Had there been no 1925 expansion, Footscray would have continued to dominate the VFA – especially if the VFA had pushed through its own relatively forgotten expansion (Preston, Oakleigh, Sandringham, Camberwell) before the League did. This would no doubt have put more pressure either for further VFA expansion in the western suburbs (which were not growing nearly as much as the eastern suburbs) or for the VFL to expand to counter the growth in the VFA.

The effects of VFA expansion occurring before VFL expansion in the 1920s are a huge wild card that would take another forum to discuss.

North Melbourne – despite its record 49-straight sequence in the 1910s – was a declining club after its failure to join the League in 1907 and 1921 cost it much support. Hawthorn was a mid-table club in the early 1920s VFA. However, along with Prahran and Brighton, Hawthorn would almost certainly have been one of the Association’s poorest clubs financially for the two related reasons of being located in a middle-class region far from industrial wealth, and large-scale donations to sport being blocked by dominance of the “amateur ideal” amongst these sections of society. Thus, it would have made little difference if North and/or Hawthorn had stayed in the VFA, apart from producing a less regulated VFL as noted in (1) above.

Ian Dicker came up with some very good plans to preserve Waverley which would have cost the afl very little but they had tunnel vision and hatred of Hawthorn for showing them up in 1996
I doubt Richmond would would have made a difference, unless you think they might have been less irrelevant with Hawthorn not in the picture

 

[Pessimistic]

Soccer was developed in England, but is very rare in the British empire. Accidents of history

 

[Isaac Cumming No 1]

Soccer was developed in England, but is very rare in the British empire. Accidents of history

Not really. The fallacy is to think soccer developed in England prior or during the expansion of the British Empire, and the expectation it would be taken with everything else to the rest of the empire. It didn't and it wasn't.

 

[Pessimistic]

Not really. The fallacy is to think soccer developed in England prior or during the expansion of the British Empire, and the expectation it would be taken with everything else to the rest of the empire. It didn't and it wasn't.

Well yes. It developed after working people got unshackled from virtual serfdom, and we got over the horror of sportsmen being paid a decent wage.
Things which pulled the rug from under the British empire machine

 

[Isaac Cumming No 1]

Well yes. It developed after working people got unshackled from virtual serfdom, and we got over the horror of sportsmen being paid a decent wage.
Things which pulled the rug from under the British empire machine

True dat

 

[mianfei]

I doubt Richmond would would have made a difference, unless you think they might have been less irrelevant with Hawthorn not in the picture

The Tigers would have been much less irrelevant without Hawthorn in the picture (which could also have occurred if Hawthorn had withdrawn from the competition as they desired in 1942) and with Hawthorn not in the picture and St. Kilda (even) weaker the Tigers would have had much more incentive and opportunities to develop the game in the Waverley region. As I noted, Richmond’s metropolitan zone around the Glen Waverley Line and the Ferntree Gully Road-High Street Road corridor lay not far from Waverley, and was backed up by a large concentration of Tiger supporters that would have certainly been larger with Hawthorn not in the picture.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Not meaningfully different, nearly 100 years later. A few founding clubs may have a bit bigger supporter bases, but that’s it really.

The defining moment for the VFA and VFL was in 1897 when the strongest clubs broke away. Anything after that is pretty minor in the overall scheme of things.

 

[mianfei]

Two points I briefly looked at in my previous posts on this site, but which I feel I should expand upon in point form:

1. From the start of the 1920s, both the VFL and the VFA wanted to expand into new suburbs.
   1. The two competitions were in effect waiting upon the other to see which would be first to make its move to expand. That the VFA wanted to increase the number of its constituent clubs from ten to twelve or more wan an open secret in 1924.
   2. Many local councils saw prestige in having a team in the VFL rather than the VFA, even those areas that could never even potentially provide the business and industrial patronage needed for success in the League
   3. Many junior clubs saw hope of moving into the VFA as a step forward from junior leagues
      • Camberwell, Coburg and Geelong West (who would all later become VFA clubs) each applied to join the VFA in 1922 and none were accepted
      • a “Geelong Association” team playing at Kardinia Park but winning only 14 of 104 games instead replaced Essendon Town after the League club took over Windy Hill
   4. Of the nine teams playing every VFA season between 1919 and 1924, Northcote was the only one who never expressed desire to join the League
   5. Many VFL clubs were supportive of a new club in the League to eliminate the bye and gain additional revenue via an extra game each week
   6. However, the VFA clubs most viable as League entrants – Footscray, Port Melbourne, North Melbourne and Brunswick – were vigorously opposed by assertive and powerful Carlton and Essendon, who would have lost large parts of their zones, and also by South Melbourne, whose zone took in part of the City of Footscray.
      1. Equally unacceptable as a tenth club was Coburg, who were playing in the VFL Reserves at the time (normally a precursor to senior status) and applied in 1922, but whose municipality was in the core of Carlton’s potential growth area
   7. These clubs desired that the new club(s) come from the non-industrial and largely patron-less areas east and south of the Yarra, for such an admission would give Carlton and Essendon the double advantage of more territory and vastly larger financial resources. Melbourne was the chief opponent of admitting Prahran – the poorest and weakest VFA club – due to its greater business orientation and fear of losing part of its zone, whilst other clubs supported it as a potential source of more wins and revenue
   8. If the VFL had not expanded, the VFA very likely would have expanded, and there might have been a danger that the Association would have gained much wider appeal in the (then-unzoned) developing outer suburbs than it did. With powerful Footscray still winning premierships, that club might have been able to recruit much more than from its restricted League zone even without the Coulter Law, though it is likely that the new VFA clubs that would probably have been admitted regardless of what the VFL did would have served merely as revenue providers for a few rich Association clubs.
2. In the 1960s, “ground rationalization” began when Richmond moved from Punt Road to the MCG as their former ground’s capacity was reduced y the widening of the ground’s namesake road
   1. If Hawthorn had not been in the VFL and no other eastern suburbs club admitted, Melbourne and Richmond would have been the most likely clubs to play in a stadium on Waverley’s site.
   2. Under these conditions, increased use of the MCG would not have occurred, especially if clubs had more revenue of their own to improve suburban grounds
   3. Which club might have moved to the MCG is not clear. Essendon is the most logical prospect since Windy Hill was one of the worst grounds in the League then, but such a move would have been improbably pre-health regulations and with potentially smaller crowds due to big clubs winning less often
   4. With Richmond and possibly Melbourne having support bases in the areas around Waverley, they would have provided a larger base for the ground than Hawthorn did in the 1980s and 1990s
   5. Thus ground rationalisation might never have occurred, especially with the points I mentioned in previous posts, or would have been focused on increasing use of VFL Park even with the problems the road lobby engenders for that ground

 

[Pessimistic]

In the last days of Waverley, the Melbourne fc banner basically celebrated the demise of Waverley.

Now they are courting Casey, even further out. Your history strengthens in my mind the so called merger of 1996 was to Melbourne a take over of what they saw was rightfully theirs

But these another theme in the thread. The clubs described acted as cartels and this bred the laziness that such as Hawthorn (and north in the seventies) ran rings round them.

 

[Rabman]

Ian Dicker came up with some very good plans to preserve Waverley which would have cost the afl very little but they had tunnel vision and hatred of Hawthorn for showing them up in 1996
I doubt Richmond would would have made a difference, unless you think they might have been less irrelevant with Hawthorn not in the picture

Genuinely interested, what plans did he have?

 

[tandino]

Why were Hawthorn admitted to the VFL in the first place?

North Melbourne and Footscray were the powerhouses of the post-war VFA but Hawthorn seemed to be travelling mid-pack or worse if ladder positions are anything to go by (probably more so back in the day as compared to today).

 

[DeadlyAkkuret]

The grand final would be played at the MCG for the next 200 years.

Oh...

 

[FootyJunkie]

So would the MCG only be used for finals, giving it a more neutral/Wembley like quality?

Would a 9 team VFL still end up expanding nationally in the 80s.... South to Sydney, Fitzroy to Brisbane (No Bears), St.Kilda to Waverley.... add West Coast, Adelaide and Tasmania? 12 team league (7 VIC, 1 each from the other states)

 

[Scanlens Man]

Interesting post/question, though as a lover of sports history, this comment confused me:

St. Kilda would not have become a power in the 1960s

Did I miss something?

 

[Pessimistic]

So would the MCG only be used for finals, giving it a more neutral/Wembley like quality?

Would a 9 team VFL still end up expanding nationally in the 80s.... South to Sydney, Fitzroy to Brisbane (No Bears), St.Kilda to Waverley.... add West Coast, Adelaide and Tasmania? 12 team league (7 VIC, 1 each from the other states)

A nine team VFL clearly would not survive market forces. K packer says hi from the grave

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Why were Hawthorn admitted to the VFL in the first place?

North Melbourne and Footscray were the powerhouses of the post-war VFA but Hawthorn seemed to be travelling mid-pack or worse if ladder positions are anything to go by (probably more so back in the day as compared to today).

Not sure the other bids were overly strong. I think Prahran and Brighton were the other possibilities.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Interesting post/question, though as a lover of sports history, this comment confused me:

Did I miss something?

From 1961 - 68 the Saints finished 3rd, 6th, 4th, 6th, runners-up, premiers, 5th, and 4th.

Performance-wise, they were one of the powerhouses of the 60s, making the top four 5 of those 8 years, making 2 GFs and winning a flag.

It was an enormous leap forward on anything they'd done before.

It was a pretty even decade after Melbourne dominated the 50s.

 

[Pessimistic]

Why were Hawthorn admitted to the VFL in the first place?

North Melbourne and Footscray were the powerhouses of the post-war VFA but Hawthorn seemed to be travelling mid-pack or worse if ladder positions are anything to go by (probably more so back in the day as compared to today).

As mentioned It was the Hawthorn council which had ambitions not the club. things got worse till late thirties then improved a little after that. If you have forecasted the actual future back then you'd have been locked up
Fifties had a concerted effort to emulate collingwood, you assume the stripes came from that.

 

[Scanlens Man]

It was a pretty even decade after Melbourne dominated the 50s.

I agree with this - which points to there not being a "power" in the decade.

Although if I was going to name one, it would be based on premierships or Grand Final appearances, in which case you'd think all of:

Melbourne 2 premierships from 2 appearances, Richmond 2/2, Essendon 2/3, Carlton 1/3

before St Kilda

 

[MISFITS]

I’ve never seen this question asked before, but I would suspect assuming no large-scale mergers between the VFL and VFA:

1. The VFL would have been less regulated because there would have been less need to support struggling clubs during the depression without having to bail out Hawthorn and North Melbourne with special loans in 1935
   • No Coulter Law, gate revenue sharing or finals revenue sharing in the 1940s and 1950s
   • St. Kilda would not have become a power in the 1960s and may not have moved to Moorabbin
   • St. Kilda would have become as vulnerable as South Melbourne and Fitzroy were to European immigrants with no interest in local football clubs, so St. Kilda might have relocated as well as South and Fitzroy
   • Fewer players lost from the big clubs to the VFA in the late 1930s and 1940s (e.g. Ron Todd stays with Collingwood when not on war service)
2. Carlton, Collingwood and Richmond would still have dominated the competition as the VFL expansion occurred when these clubs were becoming a “Big Three” via their industrial and political patronage wealth (see Up Where Cazaly?)
3. Essendon would have remained a consistent power by taking the great majority of North Melbourne’s supporter base
4. Richmond and Melbourne (to a lesser extent Carlton and Collingwood) would very largely have taken over Hawthorn’s supporter base in the Eastern Suburbs.
   • Most football fans in the eastern suburbs between 1925 and 1953 had no interest in Hawthorn but either
   1. Followed one of the to-be “Big Three” (Carlton, Collingwood, Richmond) as clubs professional insofar as the League would allow or
   2. adhered strongly to the “amateur ideal” and followed the VAFA and/or local leagues
5. Richmond would have moved to Waverley not the MCG as Waverley lay near a large concentration of Tiger players (Cities of Waverley and Knox were in the Richmond metropolitan zone) and supporters
   • Because even when Hawthorn became successful Richmond possessed a much larger following, especially latent following, than Hawthorn:
     1. The Tigers would have made Waverley Park much more viable in the long term than did Hawthorn.
     2. this would delay ground rationalisation, especially with fewer restraints on finances for clubs to improve their own venues
     3. Waverley Park might thus still be an AFL venue today even with ground rationalisation and the relocation of South, Fitzroy and also St. Kilda

Footscray alone stands relevant here: it was the richest VFA club with substantial corporate backing and had possessed potential as a VFL club even in 1897 exceeding St. Kilda, and in 1908 exceeding University and equalling Richmond. However, it is clear Footscray never submitted an application to join the League in either 1896 or 1907. Indeed, I am sure Footscray never even considered submitting such an application without having any idea why.

Had there been no 1925 expansion, Footscray would have continued to dominate the VFA – especially if the VFA had pushed through its own relatively forgotten expansion (Preston, Oakleigh, Sandringham, Camberwell) before the League did. This would no doubt have put more pressure either for further VFA expansion in the western suburbs (which were not growing nearly as much as the eastern suburbs) or for the VFL to expand to counter the growth in the VFA.

The effects of VFA expansion occurring before VFL expansion in the 1920s are a huge wild card that would take another forum to discuss.

North Melbourne – despite its record 49-straight sequence in the 1910s – was a declining club after its failure to join the League in 1907 and 1921 cost it much support. Hawthorn was a mid-table club in the early 1920s VFA. However, along with Prahran and Brighton, Hawthorn would almost certainly have been one of the Association’s poorest clubs financially for the two related reasons of being located in a middle-class region far from industrial wealth, and large-scale donations to sport being blocked by dominance of the “amateur ideal” amongst these sections of society. Thus, it would have made little difference if North and/or Hawthorn had stayed in the VFA, apart from producing a less regulated VFL as noted in (1) above.

St. Kilda would have become as vulnerable as South Melbourne and Fitzroy were to European immigrants with no interest in local football clubs, so St. Kilda might have relocated as well as South and Fitzroy

I think that all VFL clubs suffered the immigration boom to some extent.
I always thought that Footscray copped the worst in relationships with their local large migrant (mostly Asian) community that was disengaged with VFL.

I remember spending my weekends at victoria Park as a kid watching the Magpies back when they had a suburban ground.
Abottsford from memory had a large Vietnamese community.
CFC had expressed a strong push to develop Victoria Park and make it into a grand stadium.
The Collingwood council and local community would have none of it as they were not a football public.

Not the fault of migrant communities.
More the fault of the then VFL/AFL for not engageing with new Australians.

 

[Tzatziki_Man]

Not meaningfully different, nearly 100 years later. A few founding clubs may have a bit bigger supporter bases, but that’s it really.

The defining moment for the VFA and VFL was in 1897 when the strongest clubs broke away. Anything after that is pretty minor in the overall scheme of things.

You take away Richmond from 1908 and Carlton have over 20 premierships, if it wasn’t for those Hafey Tigers, And the 15-6 record in finals and 4-2 record in grand finals, Carlton would have easily eclipsed Essendon and your post wouldn’t have been written.

 

[HolyRioli]

My favourite ‘what if’ was what if all of australia preferred one code, not afl or rugby like now

Eventually there would be a national league but totally dominated by NSW and Victoria.

Other states would have a team each at most, and competitive if they were lucky

If WA only had one team, they would win it every year. There's over 100 players drafted from WA running around at the moment.

 

[mianfei]

St. Kilda would have become as vulnerable as South Melbourne and Fitzroy were to European immigrants with no interest in local football clubs, so St. Kilda might have relocated as well as South and Fitzroy

I think that all VFL clubs suffered the immigration boom to some extent.
I always thought that Footscray copped the worst in relationships with their local large migrant (mostly Asian) community that was disengaged with VFL.

I remember spending my weekends at Victoria Park as a kid watching the Magpies back when they had a suburban ground.
Abottsford from memory had a large Vietnamese community.
CFC had expressed a strong push to develop Victoria Park and make it into a grand stadium.
The Collingwood council and local community would have none of it as they were not a football public.

In my opinion, those VFL clubs located in eastern suburbs (Hawthorn, Melbourne, St. Kilda) however did not suffer at all from the immigration boom, nor of course did Geelong. However, without the aid of finals pooling from 1945, a likely scenario without the League having to help Hawthorn and North survive, the Saints would have been as or more decimated by the postwar immigration boom as South or Fitzroy or Footscray. This is why I think St. Kilda, rather than South Melbourne, would have become the relocated club without a 1925 expansion. Carlton and Essendon were only marginally affected, whilst Richmond were significantly affected early on, but a large support base in their Glen Waverley corridor metropolitan zone allowed the Tigers to completely escape, as did Collingwood with their huge widespread extant support base.

Not the fault of migrant communities.
More the fault of the then VFL/AFL for not engageing with new Australians.

There’s no doubt that the VFL in the 1950s and 1960s can be severely faulted for not engaging with Mediterranean immigrants. Had the VFL been able to do this, the fate of clubs like South Melbourne and Fitzroy would have been totally different.

The problem was that almost all Melbourne’s suburban expansion in the 1950s and 1960s was to the east, where extreme conservatism and downright hostility towards professionalism and even competitiveness in sport was the rule. (Consider that no VFA club, apart from Kilsyth who went 9—42 in three seasons, was ever admitted in the Hurstbridge, Ringwood and East Burwood corridors further out that Box Hill, and that Box Hill between 1973 and 1981 had a record of 18—143—1). In this context, most Anglo-Celtic Melburnians who played Australian Rules had no interest in the newer Mediterranean European migrants, and a few nights ago in VU Footscray Park library I was reading a book about the 1963 Geelong premiership where the author condemned South Melbourne’s administration for being too conservative.