The 1940

Victorian Football Association 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 ...

season was the 62nd season of the Australian rules football competition. The premiership was won by the

Port Melbourne Football Club The Port Melbourne Football Club, nicknamed The Borough, is an Australian rules football club based in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Port Melbourne. The club was founded in 1874 and has been competing in the Victorian Football Association/Leag ...

, which defeated

Prahran Prahran (), also pronounced colloquially as Pran, is an inner suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 5 km south-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Stonnington local government area. Prahran recorded a po ...

by 47 points in the Grand Final on 5 October. It was Port Melbourne's first VFA premiership since 1922, and its fourth overall.

Premiership

World War II had commenced in Europe in September 1939, and the Association opted to proceed with a full premiership season. The home-and-home season was played over twenty matches, before the top four clubs contested a finals series under the

Page–McIntyre system The McIntyre System, or systems as there have been five of them, is a playoff system that gives an advantage to teams or competitors qualifying higher. The systems were developed by Ken McIntyre, an Australian lawyer, historian and English lect ...

to determine the premiers for the season.

Ladder

Finals

Awards

Ted Freyer Ted Freyer (20 May 1910 – 22 April 1984) was an Australian rules footballer who played with Essendon in the VFL during the 1930s. Family The sixth of the seven children of Peter Henry Freyer (1869-1945), and Mary Freyer (1871-1928), née Su ...

(

Port Melbourne Port Melbourne is an inner-city List of Melbourne suburbs, suburb in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia, south-west of Melbourne's Melbourne central business district, Central Business District, located within the Cities of ...

) was the leading goalkicker for the season, kicking 133 goals in the home-and-home season and 157 goals overall. * This season, the

Recorder Cup The J. J. Liston Trophy is awarded annually to the best and fairest senior player in the Victorian Football League (formerly the Victorian Football Association). It is named after J.J. Liston, a businessman, civic leader and sports administrato ...

and the Association Medal, which had been parallel best and fairest awards for the Association since 1933, were merged into a single award; both trophies still existed, but they were both awarded to the same winner based on the voting system which had previously been used for the Association Medal. Brighton captain-coach Jack Davis, in his sixteenth and final season of senior football, was the winner for 1940, polling 38½ votes. Lance Collins (

Coburg Coburg () is a town located on the Itz river in the Upper Franconia region of Bavaria, Germany. Long part of one of the Thuringian states of the Wettin line, it joined Bavaria by popular vote only in 1920. Until the revolution of 1918, it ...

) was second with 34 votes, and Alby Morrison ( Preston) was third with 31 votes. *

won the seconds premiership for the fourth consecutive season. Coburg 14.16 (100) defeated Brunswick 15.5 (95) in the Grand Final, played as a curtain raiser to the seniors Grand Final on Saturday 5 October at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Notable events

* Association clubs continued to aggressively recruit star players from 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 ...

, with the agreement between the two competitions relating to player transfers having ended in 1938. In one of the Association's highest profile recruiting coups of all time, Williamstown recruited 's Ron Todd, who had won the League goalkicking in both 1938 and 1939 and was thought to be one of the best full forwards that the League had ever seen. With Todd in the team, Williamstown's membership increased from less than 1,000 to around 2,500, and ground record crowds saw Todd play at Yarraville Oval (for Todd's first Association game) and at Preston. * Following Brunswick's six-point victory against Northcote on 8 June, Northcote protested the result on the basis that the timekeepers had rung the bell to end the third quarter ten minutes early. The match was declared void, and in the replay on 20 July, Brunswick 16.13 (109) defeated Northcote 14.16 (100) by nine points. * In the final round of home-and-home matches,

2.10 (22) trailed Brighton 11.8 (74) by 52 points at three-quarter time; then, with the aid of a strong wind, kicked ten goals to one in the final quarter to win 12.16 (88) to 12.9 (81). As of 2022, it remains the largest three-quarter time deficit overcome for victory in VFA/VFL history, and the come-from-behind win saw Prahran stay ahead of Brunswick and in the final four.

External links

List of VFA/VFL Premiers This page is a complete chronological listing of the premiers of the Australian rules football competition known as the Victorian Football Association until 1995 and as the Victorian Football League since 1996. The Victorian Football Association ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:1940 Vfa Season Victorian Football League seasons VFL