The Real VFL Ladder

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After a year like we've had and those that have just gone before it, I've decided to go back and live in the past and have reconstructed the current ladder to resemble the old days of the VFL, as follows:

South Melbourne
Geelong
Fitzroy
Footscray
.......................
Hawthorn
Carlton
Collingwood
*essendon (they would have been cheating the system back then no doubt)
Melbourne
St. Kilda
North
Richmond

The top four off to the finals and the other eight off to the Old Lakeside Oval to fight it out for the Night Premiership.

They were the days and the ways from 1956 to 1971. Lou Richards and Ron Casey used to call the games on 3DB, which, by the way was the only time their call was uninterrupted by such events as "Off to the third at Doomben/Rosehill/etc".

The old Lakeside Oval was an interesting place to play those games, as it was the only ground that had lights, though of somewhat dubious quality. It was well known that in at least one dimly lit forward pocket, some old scores were taken care of, no questions asked. With just one umpire in those days, what better opportunity to even up one or two matters.

North won a couple of flags, as did the Royboys, however, being their home ground, South were pretty good there too, proving rather more successful than they did in daylight.

They also had perhaps the most feared ruckman in the game in Ken Boyd. He was one of the real tough men of the competition and copped a 12 match suspension for an incident involving John Nicholls (not in one of those night games BTW).

There was much indignation at what he did to Nicholls, though many others like me, thought he was merely performing a community service. Oh well.

 

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The Real VFL Ladder

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