The 1961 VFL Grand Final was an

Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...

game contested between the

Footscray Football Club The Western Bulldogs are a professional Australian rules football team that competes in the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's premier competition. Founded in 1877 as the Footscray Football Club, and based in West Footscray in the ...

and

Hawthorn Football Club The Hawthorn Football Club, nicknamed the Hawks, is a professional Australian rules football club based in Mulgrave, Victoria, that competes in the Australian Football League (AFL). The club was founded in 1902 in the inner-east suburb of Hawt ...

, held at the

Melbourne Cricket Ground The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), also known locally as "The 'G", is an Australian sports stadium located in Yarra Park, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Victoria. Founded and managed by the Melbourne Cricket Club, it is the largest stadiu ...

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

on 23 September 1961. It was the 64th annual

Grand Final Primarily in Australian sports, a grand final (sometimes colloquially abbreviated to "grannie") is a game that decides a sports league's premiership (or championship) winning team, i.e. the conclusive game of a finals (or play-off) series. Sy ...

of the

Victorian Football League The Victorian Football League (VFL) is an Australian rules football league in Australia serving as one of the second-tier regional semi-professional competitions which sit underneath the fully professional Australian Football League (AFL). It ...

, staged to determine the

premiers Premier is a title for the head of government in central governments, state governments and local governments of some countries. A second in command to a premier is designated as a deputy premier. A premier will normally be a head of governm ...

for the 1961 VFL season. The match, attended by 107,935 spectators, was won by Hawthorn by a margin of 43 points, marking that club's first premiership victory. Hawthorn, who were competing in their inaugural VFL Grand Final despite being in the competition since 1925, came into the game as minor premiers and favourites. Footscray, the 1954 premiership winners, had finished the home and away season in fourth place but upset the

Ron Barassi Ronald Dale Barassi Jr. (born 27 February 1936) is a former Australian rules footballer, coach and media personality. Regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of the game, Barassi was the first player to be inaugurated into ...

-led Melbourne by 27 points in the Preliminary Final to end the Demons' sequence of seven consecutive Grand Final appearances. It was a young Footscray side, with only two players coming into the game with more than 80 VFL games behind them, although one of them was veteran

Ted Whitten Edward James Whitten Sr. OAM (27 July 1933 – 17 August 1995) was an Australian rules footballer who played for the Footscray Football Club in the Victorian Football League (VFL). Born and raised into a working-class family in Footscray, Whit ...

. Hawthorn's

Brendan Edwards Brendan Edwards (18 March 1936 – 10 May 2021) was an Australian rules footballer who played for the Hawthorn Football Club in the Victorian Football League (VFL) from 1956 to 1961 and again in the 1963 season. VFL career Edwards was recrui ...

was playing in his 100th VFL game and dominated in the centre. Despite trailing at half time, Hawthorn won comfortably in the end courtesy of a dominant third quarter in which they kicked six goals to just one by Footscray. The Bulldogs did not appear in another Grand Final until

2016 File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses during the 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh ...

, which they won. The 1961 Grand Final is the oldest currently available on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

. Videos of the

1962 Events January * January 1 – Western Samoa becomes independent from New Zealand. * January 3 – Pope John XXIII excommunicates Fidel Castro for preaching communism. * January 8 – Harmelen train disaster: 93 die in the wors ...

1963 Events January * January 1 – Bogle–Chandler case: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation scientist Dr. Gilbert Bogle and Mrs. Margaret Chandler are found dead (presumed poisoned), in bushland near the Lane Cov ...

and

1964 Events January * January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved. * January 5 - In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patriarch ...

Grand Finals have not yet surfaced. It is also the first Grand Final in VFL/AFL history that did not include any of the original eight clubs that formed the VFL in 1897 (Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Fitzroy, Geelong, Melbourne, St. Kilda, South Melbourne).

Teams

{, , valign="top", Umpire: Frank Schwab

Scoreboard

{, class="wikitable" , align="left" , - bgcolor="#FF0033" ! Team !! 1 !! 2 !! 3 !! Final , - ,

Hawthorn Hawthorn or Hawthorns may refer to: Plants * '' Crataegus'' (hawthorn), a large genus of shrubs and trees in the family Rosaceae * ''Rhaphiolepis'' (hawthorn), a genus of about 15 species of evergreen shrubs and small trees in the family Rosace ...

, , 2.4 , , 3.9, , 9.15 , , 13.16 (94) , - , Footscray , , 4.2 , , 5.5 , , 6.6 , , 7.9 (51)

Statistics

Goal kickers

{, width="40%" , valign="top" width="30%" , Hawthorn: * Browne 3 * Law 2 * Mort 2 * Arthur 1 * Cunningham 1 * Edwards 1 * Hill 1 * Nalder 1 * Peck 1 , valign="top" width="30%" , Footscray: * Whitten 3 * Quarrell 2 * Hobbs 1 * McKellar 1

Attendance

* MCG attendance – 107,935

References

1961 Grand Final page on AFL Tables
* ''The Official statistical history of the AFL 2004'' * 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. {{DEFAULTSORT:1961 Vfl Grand Final VFL/AFL Grand Finals

Grand Grand may refer to: People with the name * Grand (surname) * Grand L. Bush (born 1955), American actor * Grand Mixer DXT, American turntablist * Grand Puba (born 1966), American rapper Places * Grand, Oklahoma * Grand, Vosges, village and commu ...