The 1936 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

Collingwood Football Club The Collingwood Football Club, nicknamed the Magpies or colloquially the Pies, is a professional Australian rules football club based in Melbourne that competes in the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's elite competition. The club w ...

and South Melbourne Football Club 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 ...

on 3 October 1936. It was the 38th 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 1936 VFL season. The match, attended by 74,091 spectators, was won by Collingwood by a margin of 11 points, marking that club's eleventh premiership victory.

Background

This was the second successive year in which Collingwood and South Melbourne met in a premiership decider, with Collingwood having won the 1935 VFL Grand Final. South Melbourne had contested all of the previous four Grand Finals but had emerged victorious only once, winning the 1933 VFL Grand Final. On the eve of the finals series star Collingwood full-forward

Gordon Coventry Gordon Richard James Coventry (25 September 1901 – 7 November 1968) was a former Australian rules footballer who played for Collingwood Football Club in the Victorian Football League (VFL). Accorded "Legend" status in the Australian Footb ...

was suspended for eight weeks for striking Richmond's

Joe Murdoch Arthur "Joe" Murdoch (30 October 1908 – 26 December 2002) was an Australian rules footballer who played in the VFL in between 1927 and 1936 for the Richmond Football Club. Murdoch was an exceptionally tough defender who was at the foref ...

. As it was the first time Coventry had been reported in seventeen seasons of VFL football, there was surprise at the severity of the suspension. Coventry announced his retirement, but returned, after much persuasion, for one more season.

Teams

Match summary

Collingwood opened brilliantly with a goal to Knight one minute after the opening bounce. Todd added another and a flurry of misses followed. At this stage, Collingwood was dominating the play, but then Nash finally scored South Melbourne's first goal before Robertson kicked their second.Atkinson & Atkinson, 2009, p.137

Epilogue

Collingwood would continue to feature prominently in the finals, but would lose the next two Grand Finals, to and respectively. They would not be premiers again until 1953. Having participated in the last four Grand Finals, South Melbourne would not participate in another season decider until the infamous

1945 1945 marked the end of World War II and the fall of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. It is also the only year in which nuclear weapons have been used in combat. Events Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix. Januar ...

bloodbath, and would have to wait until

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...

, by which time the club had become known as the ''Sydney Swans'', to taste premiership success.

Score

References

Bibliography

* {{Australian Football League 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 ...

Collingwood Football Club Sydney Swans