| 1883 VFA season | |
|---|---|
| Overview | |
| Date | 21 April – 29 September 1883[1] |
| Teams | 6 |
| Premiers | Geelong 5th premiership |
The1883 VFA season was the seventh season of theVictorian Football Association (VFA), the highest-level seniorAustralian rules football competition in thecolony of Victoria.
Geelong won thepremiership for the fifth time, making it the club's fifth VFA premiership in just six seasons, and the second in a sequence of three consecutive premierships won from1882 to1884.[2][3]
As theEast Melbourne Football Club folded in August 1882, the senior metropolitan membership of the Association (including Geelong) was reduced from seven to six clubs in 1883:Carlton,Essendon,Geelong,Hotham,Melbourne andSouth Melbourne.
At this time, three other provincial senior clubs were full Association members represented on the Board of Management, for a total membership of nine:Ballarat,Albion Imperial and Horsham Unions.[4] Due to distance, these clubs played too few matches against the rest of the VFA to be considered relevant in the premiership.
The 1883 premiership was won by theGeelong Football Club, captained byChas Brownlow ofBrownlow Medal fame. Geelong won fifteen and drew three of its twenty-one matches for the season. It was named premiers ahead of runners-upSouth Melbourne, whose record of eighteen wins and three draws from twenty-five matches was almost equally meritorious.Carlton finished third.
The below table details the playing records of the six clubs in all matches during the 1883 season. Two sets of results are given:
The clubs are listed in the order in which they were ranked inthe Sportsman newspaper. The VFA had no formal process by which the clubs were ranked, so the below order should be considered indicative only, particularly since the fixturing of matches was not standardised; however, the top three placings were later acknowledged in publications including theFootball Record and are considered official.[5]
| Pos | Team | Senior results | Total results | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pld | W | L | D | GF | GA | Pld | W | L | D | GF | GA | ||
| 1 | Geelong(P) | 13 | 8 | 3 | 2 | 56 | 41 | 21 | 15 | 3 | 3 | 97 | 54 |
| 2 | South Melbourne | 15 | 8 | 4 | 3 | 46 | 34 | 25 | 18 | 4 | 3 | 58 | 22 |
| 3 | Carlton | 16 | 7 | 8 | 1 | 46 | 46 | 24 | 14 | 8 | 2 | 91 | 52 |
| Essendon | 14 | 5 | 6 | 3 | 41 | 41 | 21 | 9 | 9 | 3 | 70 | 57 | |
| Melbourne | 17 | 7 | 9 | 1 | 39 | 48 | 24 | 12 | 10 | 2 | 67 | 59 | |
| Hotham | 15 | 2 | 7 | 6 | 31 | 49 | 21 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 53 | 50 |