The1966 VFL season was the 70th season of theVictorian Football League (VFL), the highest level seniorAustralian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs, ran from 23 April until 24 September, and comprised an 18-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top four clubs.

The premiership was won by theSt Kilda Football Club, after it defeatedCollingwood by one point in theVFL Grand Final. It was St Kilda's first, and to date only premiership, making it the last of the eight foundation clubs to win a premiership.

In 1966, the VFL competition consisted of twelve teams of 18 on-the-field players each, plus two substitute players, known as the19th man and the20th man. A player could be substituted for any reason; however, once substituted, a player could not return to the field of play under any circumstances.

Teams played each other in a home-and-away season of 18 rounds; matches 12 to 18 were the "home-and-way reverse" of matches 1 to 7.

Once the 18 round home-and-away season had finished, the 1966 VFLPremiers were determined by the specific format and conventions of thePage–McIntyre system.

Rules for classification: 1. premiership points; 2. percentage; 3. points for
Average score: 76.3
Source:AFL Tables

The night series were held under the floodlights at Lake Oval,South Melbourne, for the teams (5th to 12th on ladder) out of the finals at the end of the season.

Final:North Melbourne 20.12 (132) defeatedHawthorn 12.7 (79).

• At pre-season training in mid-April, at the behest ofCollingwood coachBob Rose, Collingwood club secretary Jack Burns informedDuncan Wright that his services were no longer required at Collingwood. (SeeDuncan Wright and John Somerville.)
• Richmond, under coachTom Hafey, trained pre-season withPercy Cerutty at his facilities inPortsea, Victoria.
• In the Round 14 match betweenCarlton andFitzroy, there was a once-off trial of a rule to ease congestion at centre bounces: a rectangle measuring 30yds goal-to-goal and 50yds wing-to-wing was drawn in the centre of the ground, and no more than four players from each team were permitted within the rectangle at a centre bounce.^[2] The rule was trialled again, with the area expanded to a 50yd square, during the Night Series,^[3] and it was eventually introduced as a permanent rule change in 1973.^[4]
• In Round 17,Fitzroy hosted its last seniorVFL match at theBrunswick Street Oval, its home ground since 1883. A total of 612 VFL matches were played at the venue, including four finals games. Fitzroy began its nomadic journey of playing at various grounds over the next thirty years following its departure fromBrunswick Street:Princes Park (twice),Junction Oval,Victoria Park, andWestern (Whitten) Oval.
• After the home-and-away season was finished,Richmond's reserves and under-19s teams were stripped of any premiership points earned in matches in which they fielded Frank Loughran, an unregistered player from the Latrobe Valley. The reserves team, which went through the entire season undefeated, was stripped of twelve premiership points; it fell from first to second on the ladder, but still went on to win the premiership. The under-19s team was stripped of 28 premiership points, and dropped out of the final four as a result.^[5]
• At the end of the seasonSouth Melbourne's captain-coach,Bob Skilton, resigned as coach in the belief that he could do more for the club by continuing to lead the players on the field.

• The 1966 VFL Premiership team wasSt. Kilda (its first, and to date, only premiership since the VFL's formation in1897).
• TheVFL's leading goalkicker wasTed Fordham ofEssendon who kicked 76 goals (including 3 goals in the final series).
• The winner of the 1966Brownlow Medal wasIan Stewart ofSt Kilda with 21 votes.
• Fitzroy took the "wooden spoon" in 1966.
• The reserves premiership was won byRichmond. Richmond 14.11 (95) defeatedCollingwood 13.12 (90) in the Grand Final, held as a curtain-raiser to the seniors Grand Final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on 24 September.^[6]

• Hogan, P.,The Tigers of Old, The Richmond Football Club, (Richmond), 1996.ISBN 0-646-18748-1
• Maplestone, M.,Flying Higher: History of the Essendon Football Club 1872–1996, Essendon Football Club, (Melbourne), 1996.ISBN 0-9591740-2-8
• Rogers, S. & Brown, A.,Every Game Ever Played: VFL/AFL Results 1897–1997 (Sixth Edition), Viking Books, (Ringwood), 1998.ISBN 0-670-90809-6
• Ross, J. (ed),100 Years of Australian Football 1897–1996: The Complete Story of the AFL, All the Big Stories, All the Great Pictures, All the Champions, Every AFL Season Reported, Viking, (Ringwood), 1996.ISBN 0-670-86814-0
• Strevens, S.,Bob Rose: A Dignified Life, Allen & Unwin, (Crows Nest), 2004.ISBN 1-74114-465-5

• 1966 VFL season at AFL Tables
• 1966 VFL season at Australian Football

• Australian Football League seasons
• 1966 in Australian rules football

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