1977 VFL season

1977 VFL premiership season
Teams	12
Premiers	North Melbourne 2nd premiership
Minor premiers	Collingwood 17th minor premiership
Night series	Hawthorn 1st Night series win
Brownlow Medallist	Graham Teasdale (South Melbourne)
Coleman Medallist	Peter Hudson (Hawthorn)
Attendance
Matches played	139
Total attendance	3,304,221 (23,771 per match)
Highest	108,224

The 1977 VFL season was the 81st season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs, ran from 2 April until 1 October, and comprised a 22-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top five clubs.

The premiership was won by the North Melbourne Football Club for the second time, after it defeated Collingwood by 27 points in the 1977 VFL Grand Final replay.

Night series

Hawthorn defeated Carlton 14.11 (95) to 11.5 (71) in the final.

Ladder

(P)	Premiers
	Qualified for finals

#	Team	P	W	L	D	PF	PA	%	Pts
1	Collingwood	22	18	4	0	2560	1959	130.7	72
2	Hawthorn	22	17	5	0	2618	1959	133.6	68
3	North Melbourne (P)	22	15	7	0	2124	1803	117.8	60
4	Richmond	22	14	7	1	2370	2085	113.7	58
5	South Melbourne	22	13	8	1	2148	1942	110.6	54
6	Carlton	22	13	9	0	2081	1859	111.9	52
7	Footscray	22	10	11	1	2170	2141	101.4	42
8	Geelong	22	8	14	0	1930	2333	82.7	32
9	Essendon	22	7	14	1	2085	2518	82.8	30
10	Fitzroy	22	6	16	0	2072	2474	83.8	24
11	Melbourne	22	5	17	0	2117	2492	85.0	20
12	St Kilda	22	3	17	2	1966	2676	73.5	16

Rules for classification: 1. premiership points; 2. percentage; 3. points for
Average score: 99.4
Source: AFL Tables

Finals series

Finals week 1

	Elimination final
3 September 2:30pm	Richmond	def.	South Melbourne	VFL Park (crowd: 63,663)
	5.4 (34) 7.6 (48) 11.8 (74) 13.10 (88)	Q1 Q2 Q3 Final	2.3 (15) 6.7 (43) 6.10 (46) 7.12 (54)	Umpires: Deller, Smith Television broadcast: Seven Network
Edwards, Monteath, Cloke, Dunne 2 Malthouse, Noonan, Bartlett, Raines, Roberts 1		Goals	2 Lambert 1 Goss, Browning, Teasdale, Daniher, Morrison
Bourke, Cloke, Bartlett, Malthouse, Monteath, Sheedy, Edwards		Best	Round, McLeish, Browning, Morrison, Rantall, O'Neill, Teasdale

Grand final

Main article: 1977 VFL Grand Final

Season notes

• Hawthorn's round 6 victory over St Kilda set the following records – 41 behinds (previous highest 34) and 66 scoring shots (previous highest 60). 13 different Hawthorn players kicked a behind – still a VFL/AFL record.
• For the only time in VFL/AFL history, two players from one team – Peter Hudson (110) and Leigh Matthews (91) of Hawthorn – combined for over 200 goals in one season. Additionally, it was the first time since 1906 that one club produced the top two leading goalkickers in a season.
• In the Round 15 game against Geelong, Hawthorn had three players – Hudson with eight, John Hendrie with eight, and Leigh Matthews with seven – kick seven or more goals in one match. This has been repeated only by Fitzroy with Matthew Rendell, Bernie Quinlan and Michael Conlan in 1983 against North Melbourne.
• In shocking conditions in Round 12, Carlton and Geelong played the first match since the 1927 Grand Final where both teams scored three or fewer goals. Both teams' scores were lower than any score from any other game during 1977. In the same round, North Melbourne's Malcolm Blight missed a set shot for goal after the final siren at the Arden Street Oval, which resulted in Hawthorn winning the game.
• In Round 16, Geelong beat Collingwood despite having fifteen fewer scoring shots. This equalled Richmond's record against Fitzroy from 1957.
• In the Reserve and Under-19 Grades, the appalling weather of mid- to late June caused the only cancellation (as opposed to postponement) of matches in VFL/AFL history until 2015. These cancellations affected Round 14 in the Reserves and Round 13 in the Under-19s.
• South Melbourne played in its last finals series before relocating to Sydney, as well as its first final series since 1970, and only its second since the infamous 1945 "bloodbath" grand final.
• St Kilda "won" its nineteenth wooden spoon and first since 1955. With the club having finished last 27 times since 1897, this twenty-two year gap is the longest between spoons for the club.
• Collingwood became the first VFL/AFL team to win the Minor Premiership after winning the wooden spoon the year before.

Awards

Main article: 1977 Brownlow Medal

• The Coleman Medal was won by Peter Hudson of Hawthorn with 105 goals
• The Brownlow Medal was won by Graham Teasdale of South Melbourne.
• The under 19s premiership was won by Richmond. Richmond 9.23 (77) defeated Fitzroy 7.12 (54) in the grand final, held as a curtain-raiser to the reserves grand final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on 24 September
• The reserves premiership was won by Richmond. Richmond 19.18 (132) defeated Footscray 10.15 (75) in the grand final, held as a curtain-raiser to the seniors grand final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on 24 September.

References

• Stephen Rogers and Ashley Brown (1998). Every Game Ever Played. 6th ed. Victoria: Penguin Books.

Sources

• 1977 VFL season at AFL Tables
• 1977 VFL season at Australian Football