1907 VFA season

The 1907 Victorian Football Association season was the 31st season of the Australian rules football competition. The premiership was won by the Williamstown Football Club, after it defeated West Melbourne in the final by eighteen points. It was the first premiership won by Williamstown, in its 24th season of senior competition.

1907 premiership season
Williamstown FC, premiers
Teams10
PremiersWilliamstown
(1st premiership)
Minor premiersWilliamstown
(1st minor premiership)

Premiership

The home-and-away season was played over eighteen rounds, with each club playing the others twice; then, the top four clubs contested a finals series under the amended Argus system to determine the premiers for the season.

Ladder
1907 VFA Ladder
TEAMPWLDPFPAPTS
1 Williamstown (P) 18 15 3 0 1046 653 60
2 Richmond 18 14 4 0 1387 773 56
3 Footscray 18 12 6 0 1006 708 48
4 West Melbourne 18 12 6 0 1048 813 48
5 Essendon 18 11 7 0 900 760 44
6 Brunswick 18 9 9 0 1077 1007 36
7 Port Melbourne 18 9 9 0 814 1007 36
8 Prahran 18 5 13 0 806 1202 20
9 North Melbourne 18 2 16 0 618 1179 8
10 Preston 18 1 17 0 586 1329 4
Key: P = Played, W = Won, L = Lost, D = Drawn, PF = Points For, PA = Points Against, (P) = Premiers, PTS = Premiership points Source[1]

Finals

Semi Finals
Semi Finals
Saturday, 14 September Williamstown 5.11 (41) def. Footscray 3.9 (27) East Melbourne Cricket Ground (crowd: 12,000) [2]
Saturday, 21 September Richmond 5.7 (37) def. by West Melbourne 8.13 (61) East Melbourne Cricket Ground (crowd: 7,500) [3]

1907 Final
1907 VFA Final
Saturday, 28 September Williamstown def. West Melbourne East Melbourne Cricket Ground (crowd: 25,000[4]) [5]
4.4 (28)
4.5 (29)
5.9 (39)
 7.10 (52)		 Q1
Q2
Q3
 Final		 0.2 (2)
2.6 (18)
2.9 (21)
 3.16 (34)		 Umpires: Hurley[6]
Briggs 3, Addison 2, Gibbs 2 Goals P. Johnson 2, Armstrong
  • Had West Melbourne won, minor premiers Williamstown would have been entitled to a rematch the following Saturday to decide the premiership.

Notable events
  • West Melbourne moved its home base from the North Melbourne Recreation Reserve to the East Melbourne Cricket Ground for the season, sharing the ground with the Essendon (League) Football Club.[7]
  • For the first time, Association players were required to numbers on the backs of their guernseys to enable them to be identified from a distance.[8] Some teams had been voluntarily wearing numbers since 1905, when Port Melbourne was the first to wear them.[9]
  • Owing to regular poor behaviour of its home crowds, Port Melbourne was forced by the association to play its final two home games of the season away from the Port Melbourne Cricket Ground.[10]
  • On 24 August, Prahran forward Sydney Sykes scored all twelve goals, as well as five behinds, of Prahran's total score of 12.17 (89).[11]
  • In the final round match which directly decided which club finished fourth, West Melbourne 8.10 (58) defeated Essendon 8.9 (57) by one point, with Harrison kicking the winning goal for the Wests inside the final minute.[1]
  • J. Hutchison (Richmond) set a new record for most goals kicked in a season, breaking Albert Thurgood's record of 64 goals set in 1893. Hutchison kicked 66 goals during the home-and-away season.[1]

References
  1. Old Boy (9 September 1907). "Football – Association Matches". The Argus. Melbourne. p. 5.
  2. Old Boy (16 September 1907). "Football – Association semi-final". The Argus. Melbourne. p. 7.
  3. Old Boy (23 September 1907). "Football – Association Semi-Final". The Argus. Melbourne. p. 9.
  4. "Final – Williamstown v. West Melbourne". North Melbourne Courier and West Melbourne Chronicle. Melbourne. 4 October 1907. p. 3.
  5. Old Boy (30 September 1907). "Football – the Association clubs". The Argus. Melbourne. p. 7.
  6. "With the footballers – first premiership for 'Town". Williamstown Chronicle. Williamstown, VIC. 5 October 1907. p. 3.
  7. "Football – Victorian League – Question of Grounds". The Argus. Melbourne. 28 March 1907. p. 4.
  8. Centre (1 June 1939). "The National Code – how the Association has led the way". The Age. Melbourne. p. 4.
  9. Fiddian, Marc (2004); The VFA; A History of the Victorian Football Association 1877–1995; p. 25
  10. Fiddian, Marc (2004), The VFA: a history of the Victorian Football Association, 1877–1995, p. 25
  11. "The Association – Prahran v. North Melbourne". The Prahran Telegraph. Prahran, VIC. 31 August 1907. p. 2.
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