The season featured twelve clubs, and ran from 4 April until 26 September. It was the first season to play comprise a 22-game home-and-away season, which became the standard for the following fifty years, and which was followed by a finals series featuring the top four clubs. The season saw the opening of the league's privately owned stadium, VFL Park, in Mulgrave.
The premiership was won by the Carlton Football Club for the tenth time, after it defeated Collingwood by ten points in the 1970 VFL Grand Final. A crowd of 121,696 attended the match, the all-time record for the highest Australian rules football crowd.
Background
In 1970, the VFL competition consisted of twelve teams of 18 on-the-field players each, plus two substitute players, known as the 19th man and the 20th 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 22 rounds; matches 12 to 22 were the "home-and-way reverse" of matches 1 to 11.
Once the 22 round home-and-away season had finished, the 1970 VFL Premiers were determined by the specific format and conventions of the Page–McIntyre system.
The consolation night series were held under the floodlights at Lake Oval, South Melbourne, for the teams (5th to 12th on ladder) out of the finals at the end of the home and away rounds.
Unhappy with their treatment over the three seasons they spent at Princes Park, Fitzroy moved their home ground to the Junction Oval in St Kilda.
VFL Park was opened. As part of accommodating the neutral ground, the 1970 VFL season was extended to 22 rounds, with each of the 12 clubs to play three games at VFL Park. The idea was that six clubs would play ten games on their home grounds, and the other six would play nine home ground matches. In 1971, the home ground advantage would be reversed, so that those teams that had nine home ground games in 1970 would play ten home ground games in 1971 and vice versa.[1]
The second half of the Round 1 match between Richmond and Fitzroy, played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Sunday, 5 April 1970, was attended by Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales (now Charles III) and Anne, Princess Royal, who were present as part of the 1970 royal tour commemorating the bicentenary of the first voyage of James Cook. The royals met the players on the field at half time and were present to unfurl Richmond's 1969 premiership flag before watching the second half. The match was specially scheduled to accommodate the royals' itinerary; it was the first VFL match played on a Sunday, and the second half was televised live in spite of the rules which normally precluded live telecasts of VFL matches.[3]
In Round 10, Collingwood trailed St Kilda by 60 points late in the second quarter, before coming back in the second half to win by seven points. It set a new record for the biggest comeback in VFL history which stood until 1999.[4] The half-time deficit of the 52-point deficit remains, as of 2024, the greatest half-time deficit by a winning side.[5]
The 1970 VFL season was the first in which three full-forwards (Alex Jesaulenko, Peter McKenna, and Peter Hudson) kicked at least 100 goals in a home-and-away season.
South Melbourne ended the second-longest finals drought in league history (twenty-four seasons) by finishing fourth, making the finals for the first time since 1945.
In Round 5, Ted Whitten played his 321st senior VFL game, breaking the record set by Dick Reynolds. Whitten retired after this match.
In the 1970 Second Semi-Final, Carlton's Syd Jackson was reported for striking Collingwood defender Lee Adamson. Carlton president George Harris, eager to have Jackson in his Grand Final team, devised the strategy of having the club's advocate to assert to the tribunal (on Jackson's behalf) that Jackson had been provoked by an extended series of racial taunts from Adamson, including repeatedly calling him "Sambo" and, furthermore, stating that Jackson would respond in the same way to any future vilification. The tribunal took the stance that the VFL had to be seen to protect its only top-level Aboriginal footballer at the time, and they immediately exonerated him, without hearing Adamson's side of the story, stating that Jackson had no case to answer.[6]
The 1970 Grand Final between Collingwood and Carlton was considered to be the most memorable Grand Final in VFL/AFL history. Collingwood had a great lead over Carlton during most of the game, however Carlton managed to come back and win the Grand Final by 10 points.
The reserves premiership was won by Melbourne for the second consecutive year. Melbourne 16.10 (106) defeated Richmond 16.8 (104) in the Grand Final, held as a curtain-raiser to the seniors Grand Final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on 26 September.[7]
Leading goalkickers
Numbers highlighted in blue indicates the player led the goalkicking at the end of that round.
^"Demons in on error". The Sun News-Pictorial. Melbourne. 28 September 1970. p. 57.
Maplestone, M., Flying Higher: History of the Essendon Football Club 1872–1996, Essendon Football Club, (Melbourne), 1996. ISBN0-9591740-2-8
Rogers, S. & Browne, 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