Autopsy Were VFL and SANFL premierships roughly equivalent prior to 1990 - state your case

Were they roughly equivalent in quality?

  • Total voters
    29
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Interstater

Interstater

Norm Smith Medallist
Veteran Bring Back the Bars
Jun 7, 2015
7,421
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AFL Club
Port Adelaide
I propose that they are of similar value and would like to submit this as evidence.

I accept that there were a different number of sides in each competition i.e. the VFL had 12 sides and the SANFL had 10, but I don't see this as a material difference.

 
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Mr Cheese said:
But this one is 2 higher...View attachment 1519617

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And I apologise for not including WAFL in this discussion, but I'm not qualified to make any points with regards to the WAFL.
Happy to hear the opinions of others though.

I hope this can be an interesting end of season thread and we can keep it free of personal attacks and just enjoy some interesting debate.
 

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Interstater said:
And I apologise for not including WAFL in this discussion, but I'm not qualified to make any points with regards to the WAFL.
Happy to hear the opinions of others though.

I hope this can be an interesting end of season thread and we can keep it free of personal attacks and just enjoy some interesting debate.
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Sorry couldn't resist. FWIW I think if you're going to do the whole VFL/AFL thing, then you should also do it for the other state leagues. Either that or **** it off and just have AFL.

Doesn't bother me too much as Freo have **** all either way.

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they weren't equivalent by 1990 but up to around 1980 the difference seems minimal. Basically once playing in the VFL paid enough for players to be bothered moving states, leaving their existing job outside football etc. That is when the disparity in quality really began. I would say mid 80s the floodgates opened and the drain on the SANFL was obvious.
 
Alex09 said:
they weren't equivalent by 1990 but up to around 1980 the difference seems minimal. Basically once playing in the VFL paid enough for players to be bothered moving states, leaving their existing job outside football etc. That is when the disparity in quality really began. I would say mid 80s the floodgates opened and the drain on the SANFL was obvious.
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In that replay one of the Richmond players (Rioli?) had just moved to Richmond from WA for $33k per year for 3 years.
Average wage was about $18k.
The average house price was $100k.

So players were beginning to move to the VFL for about twice the average wage.
 
The VFL was the strongest of the 3 major comps. Population took care of that. I don’t think any person can argue this.
All 3 Major state league comps were 1st tier level until about 1983 I reckon. After that the pull of the cash was to much and players up and went to the VFL.
 

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greatwhiteshark said:
The VFL was the strongest of the 3 major comps. Population took care of that. I don’t think any person can argue this.
All 3 Major state league comps were 1st tier level until about 1983 I reckon. After that the pull of the cash was to much and players up and went to the VFL.
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Absolutely...the VFL was strongest but simply because of population so not a major degree better than the WAFL or SANFL, definitely not a tier above or anything like what it became. The best footballers typically played in their own state competition. Prior to the game going full time professional in the 80s then there would have been plenty of players in SA or WA that were better than players on VFL lists.
 
Some of those North, Glenelg, Port and Norwood teams of the 80´s were dam good.

But if they came up against the Essendon and Hawthorn teams of the 80´s... I think they (VFL) win.

Those good SANFL sides beat bottom VFL sides.
 
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No doubt that top SANFL clubs were as good as top VFL clubs. Like football teams though, it's often your bottom teams that let you down. Were the bottom SANFL teams as good as the bottom VFL teams?

Do the current draft numbers highlight this point?

Last year we had 45 Victorian boys taken in the draft (28 Metro/17 Country), 16 WA, 13 SA, 4 other states, 2 international. I know more Vic clubs equal more local kids taken but there is still a disparity there and it's not like the Vic clubs are passing up quality SA or WA kids to get in inferior Vic boys.

It just suggests to me that even in a national comp, Victoria is still producing more AFL players. There is no reason to expect this wasn't the case in the VFL prior to becoming a national competition.

It's like Rugby League State of Origin. NSW could field 3 times more Origin standard players than Qld, but at the top level Qld a little bit more than NSW.
 
They were all state leagues, so "equivalent" on that basis.

Spanish teams have won the UEFA Champions League 14 times, but winning the Spanish La Liga doesn't make you champions of Europe any more than PSV Eindhoven winning the Champions League makes the Dutch Eredivisie the strongest domestic competition in Europe.

People underestimate the impact of professionalism. As above in the 60s, 70s and 80s a whole raft of clubs featured in UEFA Champions League finals. Partizan Belgrade, Celtic, Malmo, Roma, Aston Villa, Steaua Bucharest... these clubs aren't getting near it now. Most years it's the same few teams competing for the major domestic leagues then competing to win the Champion's League. If the final 8 teams this year are Man City, PSG, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Bayern Munich etc. no one will be surprised.

Applying that to footy, it's apples and oranges comparing when players were genuine amateurs to the advent of transfer fees, signing fees, salaries and then TV rights. By the time my team came to be every gun player coming through the WAFL was being courted by a VFL club. Player movement didn't increase because players suddenly all decided they wanted to test themselves in a better comp, it increased because it was lucrative. And by the 1980s it was an unsustainable cycle of VFL teams paying for WA/SA players with money they didn't have, and WA/SA clubs becoming reliant on that money. But all of that is a long way removed from what happened in 1935 or 1875.

Each to their own but I don't view flags won by VFL sides before the 1980s with any more reverence than WAFL or SANFL flags from the same era. People are always shitting on Port's "36 SANFL premierships" but they were good enough to win the SANFL and Championship of Australia double in 1890 (pre VFL existing) and then 3 more times after the advent of the VFL (1910, 1913, 1914) so I fail to see why the teams that won the VFL in those seasons deserve special praise.

I also think that the AFL as custodians of the game do a poor job celebrating the histories of clubs other than what was achieved in the VFL/AFL. Clubs existed prior to 1897, clubs played in the VFA until the 1920s and SANFL until the 1990s etc. And that's just VFL/AFL clubs...
 
What I see as the most interesting result from the above score sheets is that Sturt, who were in this period by far the best performing SANFL side, came off with the worst results of all other SANFL teams? Something looks a little screwy about that? Secondly, growing up I always thought the championship of Australia was heavily weighted to favour Victorian premier teams in that they rested significant numbers of sore players against the Tasmanian Premier, where the SA and WA premiers faced off a couple of days earlier and had no such luxury?
 
Up until 1990 there was no single league that ALL players gravitated to. Making up rough numbers here, but the VFL would've had 50-60% of the best plyers in the land, with the remaining 40-50% divided between WAFL and SANFL.

Since 1990 the game finally coalesced into a single league where all the best players go to ply their trade and earn a living. It's why it sh*ts me that VFL records and stats get lumped in with AFL records and stats. They are two different things.

The VFL was the strongest league, but WAFL and SANFL flags meant just as much to those involved as VFL flags did to Victorian clubs.
 
Dazzler9 said:
Up until 1990 there was no single league that ALL players gravitated to. Making up rough numbers here, but the VFL would've had 50-60% of the best plyers in the land, with the remaining 40-50% divided between WAFL and SANFL.

Since 1990 the game finally coalesced into a single league where all the best players go to ply their trade and earn a living. It's why it sh*ts me that VFL records and stats get lumped in with AFL records and stats. They are two different things.

The VFL was the strongest league, but WAFL and SANFL flags meant just as much to those involved as VFL flags did to Victorian clubs.
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It was easier to get a game for a SANFL side than a VFL one 1985-1995.
 
Its not really possible make a case either way. Gut feel is that the VFL was probably stronger from its inception, but not by as much as many Victorians would have everyone believe. By the 1970s, with the VFL clubs importing players en masse from WA and the VFA very much no longer able to fold VFL quality players, that gap would have opened considerably.

Would SANFL premiers of any year been stronger than VFL ones? Possibly sometimes, but rarely.
Would SANFL premiers have been the equal of the top few in the VFL? Probably, most years, but less so from (rough estimate) the 1950s onwards the gap widened and rarely by the early 1970s.
By 1990, certainly not but the bottom VFL teams were still probably no stronger than the top SANFL sides by that stage.
 
Bruxelles said:
I'd guess the best SA players were moving to the VFL by the 1970s as it paid better
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That seems to have happened more (and earlier) from the WAFL to the VFL. A lot of players stayed in the SANFL or chose to only do a few years VFL. SANFL wasn't paying the same as VFL but was quite well paying for the time before the VFL/AFL went fully professional. An SANFL club's top player was, at a guess, probably getting paid the same as a 5th or 6th player on a then-VFL list.

Obviously there were plenty who did make the switch permanently or near-permanent, but the SANFL sides managed to hold a lot of their talent as well.
 

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Autopsy Were VFL and SANFL premierships roughly equivalent prior to 1990 - state your case

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