The 1914 VFL season was the 18th season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest-level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured ten clubs and ran from 25 April to 26 September, comprising an 18-match home-and-away season followed by a four-week finals series featuring the top four clubs. It was the last season to feature University, which withdrew from the VFL after seven seasons after its strict policy of amateurism when player payments were becoming common, and its players focusing primarily on their studies, meant that the club could not remain competitive or viable in the league.
In 1914, the VFL competition consisted of ten teams of 18 on-the-field players each, with no "reserves", although any of the 18 players who had left the playing field for any reason could later resume their place on the field at any time during the match. Each team played each other twice in a home-and-away season of 18 rounds; once the 18 round home-and-away season had finished, the 1914 VFL premiers were determined through the amended Argus system.
On 16 October 1914, three weeks after the end of the 1914 season, the University Football Club dropped out of the VFL and folded. The reasons given for this decision were:
Firstly, after three promising seasons in 1908–1910, University had become very uncompetitive, finishing last in 1911–1914, and losing its last 51 consecutive matches.
Secondly, the club had found it difficult to maintain a constant lineup since the players' primary focus was on their studies rather than football, particularly during mid-year examinations.[1]
Thirdly, since University's admission to the VFL in 1908, player payments in the VFL had become commonplace, and were officially permitted from 1911, whereas University chose to remain a fully amateur club drawing solely from university students,[2] which had caused a number of players to defect to other clubs.
As such, both the club and the VFL had conceded it would be virtually impossible for University to become viable and/or competitive in an increasingly professional competition. Despite the outbreak of World War I eleven weeks earlier, the war was not given as a contributing factor in University's decision, especially as the conflict was not, at the time, expected to escalate to the extent it did.[1]
Following University's dissolution, players who wished to continue playing in the VFL were all cleared to Melbourne through an informal arrangement beneficial to both clubs:[3] University wished to see its best players playing together in the same VFL club to retain the strength of its own team for intervarsity competition,[1] and Melbourne, which had mostly struggled since its 1900 premiership due to the lack of a natural recruiting district (formal zoning was not introduced until the following year), gained exclusive access to a valuable source of recruits.[2] Among those who transferred from University to Melbourne were Jack Brake, Claude Bryan, Jack Doubleday, Dick Gibbs, Roy Park, and Percy Rodriguez.[3][4][5] The University club reformed in 1919, and continues to play amateur football in the Victorian Amateur Football Association to this day.
All of the 1914 finals were played at the MCG so the home team in the semi-finals and Preliminary Final is purely the higher ranked team from the ladder but in the Grand Final the home team was the team that won the Preliminary Final.
A crowd of 2,000 angry Carlton fans mobbed the field umpire after Carlton lost to St Kilda in round 2.[6]
In Round 14, Collingwood full-forward Dick Lee kicked eleven goals in the victory over University, equalling the record set by Jim McShane in 1899 for the most goals by a player in a game.[6]
In Round 16, a spectator ran onto the ground during the Essendon and South Melbourne match and hit Essendon captain Alan Belcher behind the ear.[6] Belcher chased the spectator, struck him, and was reported for unseemly play.[6] Belcher was cleared by the VFL tribunal.
In Round 16, University lost its 49th consecutive match, breaking the record of 48 consecutive losses set by St Kilda in 1897–1899. University dropped out of the league and folded at the end of the season, having lost its last 51 matches. As of 2021, this remains the longest winless streak in VFL/AFL history.[7]
In his 27th and final game of VFL football in Round 18, Arthur Fitzroy Best kicked the entire Melbourne score of 5.5 (35).[8]
^Rodgers, Stephen (1998). Every Game Ever Played VFL/AFL Results 1897-1997. Ringwood: Penguin Books Australia Pty Ltd. p. 850. ISBN0670908096..
Hogan, P., The Tigers of Old, The Richmond Football Club, (Richmond), 1996. ISBN0-646-18748-1
Maplestone, M., Flying Higher: History of the Essendon Football Club 1872–1996, Essendon Football Club, (Melbourne), 1996. ISBN0-9591740-2-8
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
Ross, J. (ed.), The Australian Football Hall of Fame, HarperCollinsPublishers, (Pymble), 1999. ISBN0-7322-6426-X
Atkinson, Graeme 3AW Book of Footy Records, Magistra Publishing Company Pty Ltd (South Melbourne), 1989. ISBN1863210091
