1896 VFA season
| 1896 premiership season | |
|---|---|
| Teams | 13 |
| Premiers |
Collingwood (1st premiership) |
| Matches played | 118 |
|
← 1895
|
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The 1896 Victorian Football Association season was the 20th season of the Australian rules football competition. It was the final season in which the Association was the highest level of senior football competition in Victoria, with eight of its strongest members leaving the league and establishing the rival Victorian Football League from 1897.
The season was opened on 2 May, and concluded on 3 October with a playoff match for the premiership between the top two teams, in which Collingwood defeated South Melbourne by one goal. It was Collingwood's first VFA premiership.
In 1896, the VFA competition consisted of thirteen teams of 20 on-the-field players each. Because there was an odd number of teams, at least one team had a bye each week; the idle club often travelled to Ballarat to play one of the local senior clubs in a non-premiership match.
When reporting match scores in 1896, the number of goals and behinds scored by each team is given; however, only the number of goals scored is considered when determining the result of a match. This was the final VFA season before the introduction of the modern system of scoring, in which six points is awarded for a goal and one point is awarded for a behind.
The Association had no formal tie-breakers in cases where clubs were equal on premiership points.
After the rostered premiership matches were complete, Collingwood and South Melbourne finished level on 58 premiership points, requiring the clubs to meet in a playoff match to determine the premiership. It was the second time in VFA history that a playoff match is considered to have been staged for the premiership – the first having occurred in 1878 – but it was the first time that the playoff had been required since the formal introduction of the premiership ladder in 1888.
It is often said that this playoff match was required only because, in addition to having equal win-loss records, Collingwood and South Melbourne finished with an equal record of goals scored and goals conceded; this version of events is given in several modern references. However, contemporary sources reveal this to be a myth; Association Rule 19, which specifically covered the event of a playoff, did not consider goals scored or conceded as a means of tie-breaker for the premiership, and newspaper match previews leading into Round 19 made clear that win-loss record was the only consideration for determining whether or not there would be a playoff. Additionally, the clubs' for-and-against records were not quite identical, as Collingwood had scored one goal more than South Melbourne for the season; but that the tallies were so close helped to perpetuate the myth.
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