The Australian rules football schism (1938–1949) was a period of division in the rules and governance of Australian rules football, primarily in the sport's traditional heartland of Melbourne, and to lesser extents in North West Tasmania and parts of regional Victoria. The schism existed primarily between Melbourne's pre-eminent league, the Victorian Football League (VFL), and its secondary league, the Victorian Football Association (VFA). In the context of VFA history, this period is often referred to as the throw-pass era.
The schism began in 1938, when the VFA introduced several rule changes, including legalising throwing of the football in general play. The changes helped to speed up the game, and promoted more run-and-carry play in an era which had previously been dominated by a long kicking style. Additionally, the VFA ended its player transfer agreement with the VFL, and aggressively recruited star players from the VFL. These changes gave the VFA for the first time in many years an on-field product which could compete with the VFL for public interest, and it made the 1940s one of the most successful periods in the VFA's history. By the mid-1940s, the VFA had copyrighted its rules, and was considered to be playing its own distinct code of Australian rules football.
The VFA's actions created a division in the administrative structure of the sport in Victoria. Throughout the 1940s, the VFL and VFA worked towards ending the schism, as they both believed that a single controlling body playing under a uniform set of rules was in the best interests of football as a whole. Over several years, the VFL and VFA unsuccessfully negotiated options, including for the two competitions to be amalgamated into one. The schism ended after the 1949 season, when the VFA accepted the national standard rules, in exchange for receiving its own seat on the Australian National Football Council, which ultimately gave it a voice in the administration of the game at the national level. Although the throw-pass itself did not survive beyond the schism, other innovations from the throw-pass era helped to shape the national rules of the game.
In October 1896, eight of the VFA's thirteen clubs seceded and established the Victorian Football League (VFL). The VFL comprised the strongest clubs in Melbourne, in large part because its clubs were based in the more densely populated inner suburbs where potential gate takings were higher, while the VFA's clubs were generally based further from the city centre;[3] thus the VFL became the pre-eminent football competition and administrative body in Victoria. The strongest VFA clubs regularly sought admission to the more lucrative VFL, and four clubs gained admission over the following decades (in 1908; and, and in 1925), on each occasion quelling a brief resurgence in the VFA's popularity.[4] [5] As a matter of comparison of the two competitions' strengths, the average home-and-away crowds in the 1937 season were around 14,300 in the VFL[6] and 2,400 in the VFA. Both the VFL and VFA played all matches on Saturday afternoons at the time, so the two were in direct competition with each other for spectators. It was widely acknowledged that the VFL was the higher standard competition, and even the VFA executive was prepared to acknowledge that only a handful of VFA players had the ability to succeed as senior VFL players.[7]
The responsibility for administration of the game at the national level fell at this time to the Australian National Football Council (ANFC). Formed in 1906, the ANFC comprised one delegate from each state, and later added one from Canberra and one representing amateur football nationwide. The ANFC was the custodian of the official laws of the game, which all of its affiliated competitions were required to use. The council's purpose was to provide a united control structure for the sport, and to help to promote the interests of the game as a whole; as part of this, it took levies from the southern states and distributed grants to the northern states to help them develop the game in rugby territory. Victoria was represented on the ANFC by the VFL. The VFA was not part of the ANFC;[8] but, it had a formal relationship with the VFL governed by an agreement signed between them in 1931, and the terms of that agreement indirectly brought the VFA under the ANFC's influence.
The mid-1930s had been a period of declining popularity for football in Victoria. Both the VFA and VFL were enduring financial problems, to the point where some of the weaker VFL teams were being kept afloat only by the dividends they received from finals gates. The VFA decided that it would make a series of rule changes to make the game more spectacular to try to reverse this trend. The first set of recommendations was made by its appointed rules committee in early October 1937, and the final decision on which rules to include was made at a meeting of club delegates in February 1938.[9]
The rule changes which were made were:
Another key rule which was not included amongst the original 1938 changes, but which was introduced during the 1939 season was:[20]
Overall, the committee believed the changes would retain the speed, long kicking and high marking which were thought to be the game's most attractive features, but reduce on-field congestion and roughness and make the rules simpler for the umpire to apply. Collectively, the rules became known as the VFA rules, Association rules, more informally as the throw-pass rules, or pejoratively as throw-ball; the traditional rules were known as the national rules, League rules or ANFC rules.
The original proposal put forward by the rules committee had gone significantly further. Additional rules which were put forward in 1938, but were rejected by the club delegates, were:
Observers of the new rules quickly lauded them for having their intended effects of speeding up the game, reducing congestion and making the rules easier to police consistently.[26] The Australasian sportswriter Reginald Wilmot (writing under his pseudonym Old Boy) noted that the rules helped to reward the ball-winner, compared with the old holding the ball rules which favoured the tackler.[27] Many pundits had been worried that throw-passing would lead to a reduction in long kicking and high marking, but noted that in practice, throw-passes were seldom over a distance greater than ten yards, and long kicking remained prominent.[28] [29] VFL champion player and coach Dan Minogue lauded the boundary throw-in rule as encouraging more contested football near the boundary line, rather than seeing players content to watch the ball roll out of bounds knowing that they would receive a free kick. Port Adelaide secretary Charles Hayter commented that by encouraging more play along the boundary lines, the rules brought the action closer to the spectators. Several players liked that the reduced number of scrimmages would reduce the risk of injury,[30] and a reduction in rough play and thuggery was noted.
Not all were convinced about the merits of the rules, particularly the throw-pass, after seeing them in action. Many were still concerned that over time the ease of throwing the ball would reduce long kicking and high marking. Champion North Adelaide full-forward Ken Farmer feared that in the extreme case it could result in a game played by seventeen basketballers and a full-forward. Several observers thought the rule made the game too easy, and while that catered well to VFA players, the higher standard of players in the top state leagues could be equally effective with a traditional handpass or flick-pass as they could be with a throw-pass.[31] South Australian sportswriter Steve McKee feared that allowing the throw-pass would rob the game of its individuality, which could affect its ability to compete with and distinguish itself from rival sports in the long term; and that the game would become dominated by smaller, faster players, making it impossible for larger or slower players to have a successful top level career.[32] Wilmot lamented that the agility and evasion displayed by VFL players to avoid tackles was largely absent from the VFA code, with players instead able to execute a simple throw to avoid a tackle.[33] Some observers saw the reduction in rough play as a disadvantage of the new code rather than an advantage, dismissing the VFA code as a "sissy" version of Australian rules football.[34]
A statistical analysis of the 1938 VFA Grand Final between Brunswick and Brighton was published and compared with the averages from ten VFL matches around the same time to illustrate the effect that the rule changes had on making the game more non-stop. It confirmed that the number of kicks had remained steady or even increased as a result of the changes, with a total of 650 kicks and 173 marks recorded in the VFA Grand Final compared with an average of 596 kicks and 160 marks in the VFL matches. It also showed that the ability to throw the ball had more than doubled the use of handpassing, with a total of 160 throw-passes recorded in the VFA Grand Final compared with only 76 handpasses in the VFL games;[35] this extent of handpassing was unheard of under the ANFC rules, and it was not until the 1979 VFL season more than four decades later that VFL matches would average so many handpasses per game.[36] There were only six ball-ups in the VFA Grand Final, and 38 boundary throw-ins. The average score per team per game increased by almost three goals, from 84.7 to 100.5, in the first season under throw-pass rules.
Crowds at VFA games enjoyed a substantial increase under throw-pass rules. Across the first ten rounds of 1938, the average attendance at VFA games was 3,600, compared with 2,400 for the corresponding rounds in 1937.[37] Another 22% increase in crowds was enjoyed in 1939, and club memberships likewise increased.[38] The VFA took advantage of this new found interest by extending the season from sixteen games to twenty in 1939, moving the Grand Final to the Saturday after the VFL Grand Final and securing the Melbourne Cricket Ground as its venue; with a larger venue and no VFL counter-attraction, the 1939 VFA Grand Final between Brunswick and Williamstown attracted the all-time VFA record attendance of 47,098, despite drizzly weather. Many clubs enjoyed record home crowds over the next few years.[39] [40] [41] Despite the increased crowds, overall attendances were still only about a quarter of those attracted by the VFL, which averaged between 15,000 and 16,000 to home-and-away games in 1938 and 1939.
The new rules generated the interest of other competitions, and to promote its new code, VFA teams played exhibition matches, including in Geelong, Camperdown and Frankston.[42] [43] An important match between Camberwell and a composite team of the South Australian Amateur Football League (which usually played League rules) was played in August 1938 at the Adelaide Oval to give South Australian officials the opportunity to see the new rules in action.[44]
Several small competitions in Victoria, usually the secondary competitions in their district, followed the VFA's lead and adopted the throw-pass rules for the 1938 season, even before seeing them in action: these included the Sale District Football Association,[45] the VFA Sub-Districts Association,[46] and the Bendigo Football Association.[47] Interest in the new code spread, and by 1939 the Bairnsdale and Bruthen District League[48] and the Hume Highway Football Association[49] had adopted the rules. The Yallourn District Amateur Association had adopted the rules by 1941.[50] Many other leagues held votes to determine whether or not to switch codes. More significantly, many of Victoria's schools associations also adopted the VFA's rules over its first few years, giving the new code a strong development ground for the future: the Secondary Schools adopted them in 1938,[51] the Technical Schools adopted them in 1939 and the Public Schools adopted them in 1940.[52]
The new rules also gained penetration in Tasmania, particularly in North West Tasmania. Tasmanian administrators had long advocated introducing throwing the ball, having unsuccessfully raised the motion at several ANFC meetings since 1911,[53] [54] so that there was interest in the new code in Tasmania was natural. The first competition there to adopt them was the North Western Football Association, the second-tier competition on Tasmania's north-western coast, which adopted the rules halfway through the 1938 season. It was a boon to the NWFA, and in 1939 its size increased from five clubs to nine. The smaller nearby Wilmot and Chudleigh Football Associations also adopted the new rules,[55] and a motion in 1940 to adopt the rules in the Darwin Football Association, also based in North West Tasmania, failed by a single vote.[56] However, North West Tasmania's preeminent senior competition, the North West Football Union, remained loyal to the national code.
In October 1938, the ANFC met and discussed whether or not to alter the national rules to incorporate the VFA's changes. The motion to legalise the throw-pass nationally was once again raised by Tasmania, but it again lapsed after no other state would second it. The delegates from New South Wales and Canberra were concerned that the change would make the game unable to distinguish itself from the rival rugby codes which were popular in their regions; and Victoria and Western Australia were strongly opposed, believing it would take the difficulty and skill out of the game; South Australia, which had expressed favour for the throw-pass, also declined to second the motion, preferring to see the rule in action in the VFA for at least another year before making a commitment.
At the same conference in October 1938, the ANFC agreed to adopt two of the VFA's other key rules which had a significant effect on gameplay: altering the holding the ball rule to eliminate the provision for a player to drop the ball when tackled; and re-introducing the boundary throw-in whenever the ball went out of bounds, except when put out deliberately.[57] Both rule changes have become fundamental to modern Australian rules football: the modern holding the ball rule, as it applies to a player who has had an opportunity to dispose of the ball prior to being tackled, is practically unchanged from the 1939 interpretation; and other than the introduction in 1970 of a free kick for kicking out of bounds on the full, the boundary throw-in rule remains unchanged.
The rules the VFA had introduced to curb rough or time-wasting play were not immediately adopted by the ANFC, but were adopted over the following decades. The ANFC adopted the downfield free kick into its rules in 1945,[58] and it adopted the fifteen-yard penalty for time-wasting or cribbing over the mark in 1954;[59] both rules remain part of modern football, except that the distance of the fifteen-yard penalty was extended to fifty metres in 1988.[60]
The change to the out of bounds rule in the national code is often considered to have brought an end to the era of dominant full-forwards which had existed during the 1930s: century goalkickers such as Gordon Coventry and Bob Pratt in the VFL, Frank Seymour in the VFA, Ken Farmer in South Australia and George Doig in Western Australia had been common during the 1930s, but were decidedly less common over the next thirty years, generally put down to the fact that play could be more safely directed along the boundary lines, bringing the forward pockets and half forward flankers into play and resulting in a wider spread of goalkickers.
In spite of this, the four VFA seasons played between 1939 and 1945 under throw-pass rules featured some of the most dominant goalkicking displays by full forwards in the game's history. George Hawkins (Prahran) won the 1939 goalkicking title with 164 goals; Ted Freyer (Port Melbourne) won the 1940 title with 157 goals; Bob Pratt (Coburg) won the 1941 title with 183 goals; and Ron Todd (Williamstown) won the 1945 title with 188 goals – all of which exceeded the then-record of 152 goals set under national rules by George Doig in 1934.[61] Many other high totals were recorded in those four seasons. Sportswriters noted that Freyer's dominance in 1940 came from Port Melbourne adopting a straight-down-the-middle style of play in spite of changed boundary rules,[62] but it was surmised that the sheer skill of those particular forwards playing in the much lower standard VFA teams, particularly the war-weakened teams from 1940 until 1945, was a major contributor to their dominance.[63] [64] These historic goalkicking feats were confined to those four seasons; outside that period, the most goals scored in a VFA season during the throw-pass era was 114, by Todd in 1946.