The 1956 VFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the Melbourne Football Club and Collingwood Football Club, held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on 15 September 1956. It was the 59th 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. S ...

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

1956 VFL season Events January * January 1 – The Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ends in Sudan. * January 8 – Operation Auca: Five U.S. evangelical Christian missionaries, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, Jim Elliot and Pete Fleming, are kil ...

. The match was won by Melbourne by 73 points, marking that club's eighth premiership victory. It was the second successive year in which the two teams met in a premiership decider, with Melbourne having won the 1955 VFL Grand Final. The Grand Final was attended by 115,902 spectators, easily setting a new record as the largest crowd to have witnessed a premiership decider in VFL Grand Final history, breaking the record of 96,486 spectators who witnessed the 1938 VFL Grand Final. The capacity of the ground had recently been expanded with a new grandstand for the upcoming 1956 Summer Olympics, but the ground was still not large enough to comfortably or safely accommodate such a large crowd; stairwells and aisles were full of people, meaning that many people were unable to leave their positions to use restrooms during the game; and many people had restricted views of the game due to the crowding, resulting in some spectators climbing onto the roofs or back walls of the grandstand and other structures for a better view. The gates were shut for safety reasons when the venue reached capacity, resulting in riots outside the ground in which an estimated 2,500 further spectators broke into the ground. More than 20,000 spectators were turned away at the gate. Pre-sale ticketing for finals was introduced from the following season to prevent a repeat of these events, and the crowd record stood until the

1968 VFL Grand Final The 1968 VFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the Carlton Football Club and Essendon Football Club, held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Saturday, 28 September 1968. It was the 71st annual Grand Final o ...

– after the opening of the Western Stand. A scene from the game is captured in Jamie Cooper's painting ''The Game That Made Australia'', commissioned by the AFL in 2008 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the sport:Australian Football League
The Game That Made Australia
Retrieved 19 September 2010 Collingwood's Neil Mann and Melbourne's

Ian Ridley Ian Jeffrey Ridley (15 February 1934 – 13 November 2008) was an Australian rules footballer who played for Melbourne in the VFL. Playing career Ridley was a rover who was handy around goals and a 5-time premiership player with Melbourne. He ...

fighting amongst the spectators who were sitting on the arena (but behind the boundary line).

Teams

{, , valign="top", *Umpire: Allan Nash

Statistics

Goalkickers

{, style="width:40%;" , - , style="vertical-align:top; width:30%;", Melbourne: * S. Spencer 5 * A. Webb 5 * R. Barassi 3 * B. Johnson 3 * I. Ridley 1 , style="vertical-align:top; width:30%;", Collingwood: * B. Greve 1 * W. Jones 1 * B. Serong 1 * K. Smale 1 * K. Turner 1 * B. Twomey 1

References

AFL Tables: 1956 Grand Final
* ''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. {{Australian Football League VFL/AFL Grand Finals Vfl Grand Final, 1956 Melbourne Football Club Collingwood Football Club