1977 VFL season

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.

Home-and-away season

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

Round 4

Round 5

Round 6

Round 7

Round 8

Round 9

Round 10

Round 11

Round 12

Round 13

Round 14

Round 15

Round 16

Round 17

Round 18

Round 19

Round 20

Round 21

Round 22

Ladder

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

Finals series

Finals week 1

Finals week 2

Preliminary final

Grand final

Grand final replay

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.^[1]
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.
As of 2022, North Melbourne is the only team to play twenty-seven premiership matches in a VFL/AFL season.^[2] John Cassin was the only player to play in all 27 matches.

Awards

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 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.^[3]

References

^ "Hawthorn v St Kilda, Rd 6, 1977". afltables.com. Retrieved 16 September 2020.
^ Rodgers, Stephen (1996). 100 Years of AFL players – Volume 3. Melbourne: East-Side Printing. p. 1586. ISBN 0646300164.
^ "All the scores". The Age. Melbourne, VIC. 26 September 1977. p. 30.

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