1945 VFL premiership season
Carlton Football Club, premiers
Teams	12
Premiers	Carlton 7th premiership
Minor premiers	South Melbourne 6th minor premiership
Brownlow Medallist	Not awarded
Fred Fanning(Melbourne)
Matches played	124
Highest	62,986
← 1944 1946 →

The1945 VFL season was the 49th season of theVictorian Football League (VFL), the highest level seniorAustralian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs, ran from 21 April until 29 September, and comprised a 20-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top four clubs.

The premiership was won by theCarlton Football Club for the seventh time, after it defeatedSouth Melbourne by 28 points in the1945 VFL Grand Final.

In 1945, the VFL competition consisted of twelve teams of 18 on-the-field players each, plus one substitute player, known as the 19th 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 20 rounds; matches 12 to 20 were the "home-and-way reverse" of matches 1 to 9.

The determination of the 1945 season's fixtures were greatly complicated by the fact that both theMelbourne Cricket Ground and theLake Oval wereappropriated for military use and, because of this,Melbourne shared thePunt Road Oval withRichmond as their home ground, andSouth Melbourne shared theJunction Oval withSt Kilda as their home ground.

Once the 20 round home-and-away season had finished, the 1945 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: 84.6
Source:AFL Tables

• The home-and-away season was expanded to 20 rounds.
• The VFL adopted the "downfield free kick" rule, such that if a player is fouled after disposing of the ball, the free kick is taken at the spot where the ball lands by the nearest team-mate, not at the spot of the foul.^[1]
• St Kilda changed its nickname fromSeagulls toPanthers in the 1945 season, after a supporter had presented the club with an oil painting of a panther to be hung in the club rooms.^[2] The change never truly caught on, and fell out of common use relatively quickly.
• South Melbourne's captain andBrownlow Medal winnerHerbie Matthews and South Melbourne forwardKeith Smith were dropped from the Round 13 match by their club for refusing to play in the positions they were directed to play in.
• After its Round 14 loss toEssendon,Carlton won its next nine consecutive matches (including the Grand Final).
• North Melbourne made the finals for the first time since entering the VFL in 1925. Of the three clubs to enter the league in 1925, onlyHawthorn had not yet made the finals, and would not do so until 1957.
• The 1945 second semi-final was South Melbourne's last finals win as "South Melbourne". The club did not play finals again until 1970, and did not win another final until 1996, after it had moved to Sydney – a fifty-one-year gap.
• Carlton's 1945 premiership win was the first time since thePage–McIntyre system had been adopted in 1931 that a team from fourth place on the home-and-away ladder won the Grand Final.
• The Grand Final was held atPrinces Park for the last time. It has been held at theMCG every year since, except 1991 (due to redevelopment works at the ground), 2020 and 2021 (both due to theCOVID-19 pandemic preventing the match being played at the ground).
• The Grand Final, played in extremely wet, muddy conditions, is remembered as"the Bloodbath" for its overall continuous violence (on the field and amongst the fans), and its plethora of crude king hits and brawls (many of which were broken up with the assistance of team officials and the police). The Melbourne tabloid newspaper, The Truth, called it "the most repugnant spectacle League football has ever known", with ten players reported for a total of sixteen offences.

• The 1945 VFL Premiership team wasCarlton.
• TheVFL's leading goalkicker wasFred Fanning ofMelbourne with 67 goals.
• NoBrownlow Medal was awarded in 1945.
• St Kilda took the "wooden spoon" in 1945.
• The seconds premiership was won byFootscray. Footscray 9.16 (70) defeatedFitzroy 9.3 (57) in the Grand Final, played as a stand-alone match on Saturday 22 September atVictoria Park before a crowd of 6,000.^[3][4]

• 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

• 1945 VFL season at AFL Tables
• 1945 VFL season at Australian Football

• Australian Football League seasons
• 1945 in Australian rules football

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