Exactly. Every club has cultural quirks. Ours is conspiracy theories by the AFL. Probably only a minority, and often tongue in cheek, but it is a reputation we seem to have.
Proposal to include premierships dating back to 1870 gathering pace
- Thread starter MelbourneGWS
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- May 5, 2016
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It doesn’t ‘offend’ me I just think it’s ridiculous to think that anyone would look at this book or Carter’s opinion and think it represents ‘the Cats.’ I think you’ll find as the saying goes the squeakiest wheels get the most oil, ie. the ones who believe it will be the ones constantly saying it - which really isn’t many.
- May 5, 2016
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Spot on
- Sep 22, 2011
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Recognised by who?
You’ve just quoted some random website.
Go and start your random website and make a table showing whatever you like. It’ll be exactly the same.
The league’s official records don’t do this, and nor should they.
What you’re so frustrated about is narrative. So go and change the narrative. Narratives change all the time.
The official records don’t change.
The inability of people like you and Carter to seperate narrative from historical record is what has you so frustrated.
- Apr 24, 2013
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Yes, your inane, completely lacking any nuance, repetition that it is the 'same competition' is well understood.
It doesn't make it any more persuasive to those of us who aren't obsessed with the silly technicalities to justify an illogical system and understand that the status quo can easily be changed.
- Feb 13, 2011
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Except Carter wants to include premierships from 1870-1876, when it was decided by newspapers.
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A new league was formed for the 1897 season that was completely separate from the VFA.
At no point in the VFL-AFL history was a brand new league formed. Renaming an existing league does not make it a new league.
Is Wikipedia a random site?:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_records_and_statistics_in_EnglandHow about Statista? (one of the largest online statistics companies in the world): https://www.statista.com/statistics/383696/premier-league-wins-by-team/
Football Wiki: https://football.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_English_football_champions
My Football Facts: https://www.myfootballfacts.com/england_footy/english-domestic/total-league-championship-won/
WorldFootball.net: https://www.worldfootball.net/winner/eng-premier-league/
With the exception of Football Wiki to a minor extent, all these major websites do not seem to draw any distinction between Premierships won in the Old First Division and the Premier League. Just a continuous flow from one era to the next OR no distinction between the eras in the tallies.
And there are many many other examples too.
Are all these websites run by frustrated and deluded people like Col and I too?
Perhaps they are run by angry Liverpool fans, who cannot accept that their club has only won 1 Premiership in the EPL era.
- Feb 21, 2006
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It's not a technicality. It is the historical record. It doesn't have to be persuasive. It is fact.
- Sep 22, 2011
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That's all fine. If people want to view things that way and it becomes the prevailing narrative, that's up to them.
None of these sites represent the official records of the Football League or the Premier League. Carter wants the AFL to change their official records to co-opt and include VFA (and even pre-VFA) seasons. That's just wrong. They're not the AFL's records.
I've got no beef with Carter having his view of footy history and promoting it. Hell, I even agree with much of it - I regard my club as having won 20 senior premierships. But they're not all VFL or AFL premierships and telling that competition they should include them as part of their own history is just wrong.
Rather than wasting his time on that crap, I'd tell Carter his energy would be much better spent setting up his own independent football history group and promoting that as a means to shifting the narrative.
If the VFL in 1897 did what the Premier League did in 1992 by allowing all existing clubs to join (promotion-relegation) then I would probably agree to include the VFA titles (from the year when all teams played the same amount of matches).
So if in 1877 the top division was called VFL with its eight breakout clubs and the second division was called VFA with the remaining five clubs (with more to be added in time) and it being promotion-regulation between the two.
Then I could see a point on recognising the VFA Premierships from 1894 - 1896.
Would have been interesting how the AFL would have turned out if this would have happened?
I could see it being 3 division system with the third division having three Leagues.
Example
AFL
Division 1
Division 2 (SANFL, WAFL, NEAFL-VFA)
AFL/Division 1 Promotion-Regulation
- AFL wooden spooners vs Division 1 Premiers
Division 1/Division 2 Promotion-Regulation
- Division 1 woodenspooners regulated
Round Robin play off with three Premiers in - - Division 2. Winner promoted to Division 1.
Probably would not have worked and AFL is better as a closed League
The English Premier League break-away reminds me of the old Mentals song “If you leave me, can I come too”?
A closed European League is inevitable and when this happens the League won’t recognise all former titles. But probably be in the stats for some time as it looks strange with all clubs on 0.
Just like newspapers included the VFA Premierships for some time…
It was. Except that the VFA continued after 1896. Quite happily for a long, long time. At a very high standard for quite a while too, with high profile VFL stars jumping ship there - Ron Todd and Bob Pratt among others.
I've already posted this - you only need to look at how the pre-1897 VFA was run to see how far away it was from any serious sporting organisation - no finals series (let alone Grand final), no ladder, no set fixture, teams not even playing the same amount of games, a game of two halves and not four quarters, different scoring, and lastly and most hilarously, premierships decided by press consensus.
The clock starts from 1897 - for premierships and everything else. If your side isn't at the top of the premiership table and you can't handle it, tough shit.
Exactly. The top level of English Soccer is regarded and categorized as the same, and when Manchester United were closing in (and passed) Liverpool's record of 18 titles, much was made of it. All that really happened was that top tier broke away from the football league in an official sense but this had no impact on promotion/relegation, or the fact that it remained the top tier.
You know the funny thing also? The League Cup (not to be confused with the FA Cup) is the Cup competition played amongst the professional top-4 leagues of English Football. It is called the league cup because it comprises teams from the football league. Yet when the Premier League began, the top tier had broken away from the Football League, so theoretically the top tier shouldn't be in it. Yet the fact that the top-tier still compete in the League Cup (even though they're not part of the League), shows everyone really just treats the top tier the same way they treated it prior to 1992
List of English football champions - Wikipedia
- Apr 30, 2015
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Well, that depends. Has the renamed league changed sufficiently to be recognised as a different beast to what it used to be? My answer is yes. Others disagree.
It's like saying modern humans are the same as ancient apes. Sure, there's a continuous line of evolution, but they're clearly different animals.
Maybe a tortured analogy but I hope it illustrates my viewpoint.
threenewpadlocks
Brownlow Medallist
I cannot believe that this thread still has legs.
The funny thing is, other than just writing a book, Carter hasn't seemed to champion a re-examination of wider footballing history as opposed to simply wanting to artificially misconstrue a tally of premierships.
Is too much of football history, generally, examined specifically through the 1897-current competition, when football history is rich with pre-1897, pre-colour TV, non-Victorian, non-VFL, representative and interstate football, that doesn't get its significance? Clearly yes.
Take Tom Leahy. Leahy was the champion ruck in the country roughly between 1900-1920. His outstanding play at the 1911 carnival, which was clearly a better standard of football than any individual leagues, should have been recognised in the Hall of Fame more than his belated introduction in 2023. We have 10 players in the Hall of Fame that specifically made their debut in just specifically the VFL competition in 1967, or making their debuts 29 years before the introduction of the Hall of Fame, a perfect sweet spot for memory-based romanticism rather than objectively assessing them against the Leahy's of the world, players in a different competition and in a different era
Do you see Carter making these kinds of arguments? No? Clearly we can infer his motivations here, and it isn't for a pure love of history of the sport.
The funny thing is, other than just writing a book, Carter hasn't seemed to champion a re-examination of wider footballing history as opposed to simply wanting to artificially misconstrue a tally of premierships.
Is too much of football history, generally, examined specifically through the 1897-current competition, when football history is rich with pre-1897, pre-colour TV, non-Victorian, non-VFL, representative and interstate football, that doesn't get its significance? Clearly yes.
Take Tom Leahy. Leahy was the champion ruck in the country roughly between 1900-1920. His outstanding play at the 1911 carnival, which was clearly a better standard of football than any individual leagues, should have been recognised in the Hall of Fame more than his belated introduction in 2023. We have 10 players in the Hall of Fame that specifically made their debut in just specifically the VFL competition in 1967, or making their debuts 29 years before the introduction of the Hall of Fame, a perfect sweet spot for memory-based romanticism rather than objectively assessing them against the Leahy's of the world, players in a different competition and in a different era
Do you see Carter making these kinds of arguments? No? Clearly we can infer his motivations here, and it isn't for a pure love of history of the sport.
threenewpadlocks
Brownlow Medallist
Yes, but we can scientifically determine that Homo sapiens is a distinctly different genetic beast than other members of the, ahem, Homo genus. We can make transitional steps along the way and state that this species of homo is distinct from that species.
The issue is that the evolution of a state-based competition encompasses so many elements you can get so reductive that is loses all meaning. Is the AFL of 2024 sufficiently different to 1897? Sure.
But is the AFL of 2024 sufficiently different to 1994? We can argue yes and no. We can argue no, it is not different, it is similar, and we can count Carlton and North's flags in 1995 and 1996. There was a presence in all state and territories in 1994 most of the best players in the league were running around in the AFL. But on the other hand, Fremantle and Port Adelaide were soon to enter the league with teams that were partially filled with WAFL and SANFL talent, so clearly there was still some AFL-quality talent running around in state leagues in 1994.
Once you get to that level of reduction, there's no point. Congratulations to Carlton and North who are specifically the greatest teams of that specific two-year period of 1995-1996 where most of the Western Australian talent had entered the AFL via Fremantle but not all of the best South Australian such as Josh Francou and Darren Mead were still running around in the SANFL in 1996.
Were Carlton and North truly the champions of a period that we can say is equal to 2024? Or was because it was distinct enough, because they won a competition that didn't have Darren Mead and Josh Francou running around in it in 1996, in much the same way we can "not rate" a VFL competition that never had John Todd and Russell Ebert (except for one year) run around in it?
IMO there's an argument that the "modern" AFL began largely in 2002, when the massive increase in the TV deals allowed for greater central payments by the AFL to poorer clubs, and evolved the AFL from a "poor" organisation to a "rich" one, which changed a lot about how the league worked. I'm not saying it was a distinct change or that records should be different.
It's all a bit pointless, so the best way is just to accept even if uncomfortable that the current, national competition does maintain a record keeping history with a previous, state-based competition.
It has from 1897 undoubtedly, but there's a few critical considerations:
- From 1989 (last year of the VFL) to 1990 (first year of the AFL) all that changed was the name. Literally that was it. Players, coaches, grounds, all stayed the same.
- Anyone who argues that you can only include the AFL era miss a vital point - it is now, and has been since 1987, an expanded VFL competition. It still is. It was never a separate competition with 8 or 12 or 14 clubs going their own way and starting something new (which by the way, is exactly what the VFL was in 1897.)
- Really there have only been a handful of seasons since 1897 when any kind of important change occurred, and that's only to do with new teams joining the competition. Prior to 1987 when it became expanded, it had happened twice in 90 years (1908 and 1925).
- This is my biggest flaw in the argument, if you want monumental differences, look at the VFL of 1897 with the VFA of even 1887. It's huge.
I'm curious, how much weight does www.sportingintelligence.com have towards the official EPL records?
I believe in 1924 Essendon won the VFL Premiership and Footscray won the VFA Premiership , and they had a playoff game for the champion of Aust status and Footscray won , and i think were presented with a Cup or a flag or something , so i wonder if that counts for anything
Of course the following year Footscray were admitted into the VFL Competition
Of course the following year Footscray were admitted into the VFL Competition
- Nov 10, 2022
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VFA titles by the 3 breakaway clubs in 1925 should also be included under the same logic as the original 8
threenewpadlocks
Brownlow Medallist
The difference is that, unlike the logic used by Colin Carter, Dogs fans are not trying to represent that Essendon didn't win the 1924 VFL/AFL Premiership, however you want to interpret the meaning of a subsequent game.
We understand that Essendon were clearly the premier team of the 1924 VFL season.
There was no premier team of the 1896 VFL season, because it did not exist.
I first saw this thread and thought, "Not this old chestnut again", and expected it to just peter out after a page or two. 34 pages and it's still going!!! Have we really run out of things to talk about?
Just getting started I think. It's my favourite thread on all of BF.
