The 1933 VFL season was the 37th season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest-level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs and ran from 29 April to 30 September, comprising an 18-match home-and-away season followed by a four-week finals series featuring the top four clubs.
In 1933, the VFL competition consisted of twelve teams of 18 on-the-field players each, plus one substitute player, known as the 19th man. A player could be substituted for any reason; however, once substituted, a player could not return to the field of play under any circumstances.
Teams played each other in a home-and-away season of 18 rounds; matches 12 to 18 were the "home-and-way reverse" of matches 1 to 7.
Once the 18 round home-and-away season had finished, the 1933 VFL Premiers were determined by the specific format and conventions of the Page–McIntyre system.
"Checker" Hughes took over as coach of Melbourne. He renamed the team "The Demons" from "The Fuchsias."
In Round 5, St Kilda defeated North Melbourne 13.19 (97) to 11.17 (83), despite having only 15 players left at the end of a brutal match, which was stopped at one stage because a wild brawl, instigated by the North Melbourne players, had erupted in the centre.
The St Kilda President, Gallipoli veteran and naval war hero Commander Fred Arlington-Burke, described St Kilda's 15-man victory as the greatest moral victory in the club's history, and a "Badge of Courage" was struck by the Football Club and was awarded to each of the players that took part in the match.
The medallion is silver, coin shaped, with coin-like reeding around its outer perimeter (with no circumferential milling), with a St Kilda Football Club badge affixed to it, and the following inscription: "St KILDA DEFEATED Nth MELBOURNE WITH 15 MEN MAY 27th 1933". (Photograph of Medal at Ross, 1996, p. 140)
In Round 8, Essendon experimented with a siren, rather than a bell at Windy Hill.
In the dying minutes of the close South Melbourne–Richmond match in Round 8, umpire Jack McMurray Sr. awarded a controversial free kick against Richmond full back Maurie Sheahan, judging that he was deliberately wasting time by setting up to kick in with a place kick after a South Melbourne behind – despite the fact that time was off until the kick-in was executed. The resulting goal narrowed South Melbourne's deficit to five points, but the siren sounded almost immediately after the next centre bounce.[1][2]
In the 1933 Interstate Carnival, held in Sydney, the Victorian team won all five of its matches.
The President of the South Melbourne Football Club, grocery magnate Archie Crofts, had brought so many interstate players to South Melbourne – with the promise of a well-paid regular job in one of the Crofts Grocery chain stores in addition to their receiving maximum playing and training fees allowable under the "Coulter Law" – that the 1933 team was christened "The Foreign Legion". Those comprising the "Foreign Legion" were Bert Beard, John Bowe, Brighton Diggins, Bill Faul, and Joe O'Meara from Western Australia, Ossie Bertram, Wilbur Harris, and Jack Wade from South Australia, and Frank Davies and Laurie Nash from Tasmania. South Melbourne played in four consecutive Grand Finals from 1933 to 1936, but won only the 1933 premiership.
North Melbourne's win over Collingwood in Round 6 was the first by one of the three 1925 entrants (Footscray, Hawthorn, North Melbourne) over the Magpies. Prior to that, Collingwood had won the first 37 meetings against the three newest clubs. Footscray's first win over Collingwood came in Round 9 of this year, but Hawthorn would not record its first win over Collingwood until Round 5 of the 1942 VFL season (in the 30th regular-season meeting between the two clubs).
Essendon took the "wooden spoon" in 1933. Essendon would not "win" another wooden spoon until 2016 (eighty-three years), the second longest spoon drought in league history.
The seconds premiership was won by Melbourne for the third consecutive season. Melbourne 10.15 (75) defeated St Kilda 10.14 (74) in the Grand Final, played as a stand-alone game on Thursday 28 September (Show Day holiday) at the Melbourne Cricket Ground before a crowd of 9,500.[3]
^"McMurray was right in penalty". The Sporting Globe. 21 June 1933. p. 9.
^"Field umpire displayed rare courage". The Record. South Melbourne. 7 August 1954. p. 3.
^Onlooker (29 September 1933). "League seconds". The Argus. Melbourne. p. 13.
Hogan, P., The Tigers of Old, The Richmond Football Club, (Richmond), 1996. ISBN0-646-18748-1
Rogers, S. & Brown, A., Every Game Ever Played: VFL/AFL Results 1897–1997 (Sixth Edition), Viking Books, (Ringwood), 1998. ISBN0-670-90809-6
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. ISBN0-670-86814-0