The 1942 WANFL season was the 58th season of the
Western Australian National Football League
The West Australian Football League (WAFL) is an Australian rules football league based in Perth, Western Australia. The league currently consists of ten teams, which play each other in a 20-round season usually lasting from March to September, ...
. Whilst the previous two seasons had been increasingly affected by the drift of players to the services, the 1941/1942 off-season saw the
Imperial Japanese Navy
The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender ...
and air force move into the north of Western Australia,
bombing many northwestern settlements.
Consequently, virtually all senior WANFL players had been enlisted to war work or the military.
['League Football Suspended'; '' The Daily News'', 26 February 1942, p. 6] By the new year the WANFL was aware that normal senior league football would be impossible, and the league decided after debate late in February
to conduct a competition for those too young for military service, with players required to be under the age of eighteen on 1 October 1942. Teams were largely drawn from the Young Sports' Temperance League, which had fifty-three clubs in 1941.
['Football: War-Time Competitions – The Under-Age Groups'; '']The West Australian
''The West Australian'' is the only locally edited daily newspaper published in Perth, Western Australia. It is owned by Seven West Media (SWM), as is the state's other major newspaper, ''The Sunday Times''. It is the second-oldest continuousl ...
'', 26 February 1942, p. 2 Associated with the under-age competition was the temporary abolition of
district football with the expectation that when peace returned players would return to the club for which they would ordinarily be zoned.
Bassendean Oval
Bassendean Oval currently known as Steel Blue Oval for sponsorship reasons, is a sports stadium, located in Bassendean, Western Australia. The capacity of the venue is 22,000 people.
It usually hosts Australian rules football matches and is t ...
was taken over by the military before the season started, as were early in the season Fremantle Oval and the WACA – though both were vacated a third of the way through. The WANFL also had to ensure that all grounds totalled less than to prevent landing by airborne troops.
[Barker, Anthony J.; ''Behind the Play: A History of Football in Western Australia'', p. 84. ]
When the season was planned, it was proposed to exclude Perth and Swan Districts, who had been the bottom two clubs in 1941 and lacked adequate junior players. Perth eventually fought for inclusion, resulting in a seven-team competition with a
bye until the clubs had played each other twice, after which it was announced the bottom team would drop out and, as in the WAFL between 1911 and 1913 and the
1943 VFL season, a bye-less draw was made for the last five rounds. Perth were the team to drop out, after winning two early matches, whilst 1941 premiers West Perth proved the strongest team all through the season and possessed not only the premiership but also the Sandover Medallist (a future Swan Districts player), the leading goalkicker and a future postwar star in
Fred Buttsworth.
A notable tragedy occurred in August when high-flying key forward John Hetherington of Subiaco, whose superb marking won rave reviews and gave him fifty-four goals in twelve matches, was struck down by polio and became a paraplegic despite the problem being initially seen as back trouble.
[Spillman, Ken; ''Diehards: The Story of the Subiaco Football Club 1896–1945''; pp. 167-168. ]
Home-and-away season
Round 1
Round 2
Round 3
Round 4
Round 5
Round 6
Round 7
Round 8
Round 9
Round 10
Round 11
Round 12
Round 13
Round 14
Round 15
Round 16
Round 17
Round 18
Round 19
Ladder
Finals
First semi-final
Second semi-final
Preliminary final
Grand Final
References
External links
Official WAFL websiteWestern Australian National Football League (WANFL), 1942{{WAFL seasons
West Australian Football League seasons
WANFL
The West Australian Football League (WAFL) is an Australian rules football league based in Perth, Western Australia. The league currently consists of ten teams, which play each other in a 20-round season usually lasting from March to September ...