How the game was played in 1909

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Some of the interesting things I took from this:

no one in the crowd dared being seen without a hat
mostly long sleeve jumpers, and those with short sleeves generally seemed pretty muscular (a choice to show off their manual labourer arms? I'm assuming not much weights were done back then.)
shorts as long as Eddie Betts' !
throwing the ball (or nearly) seemed to be legal
place kicks (set kicks off the ground)
no drop punts
the umpires very close to the play
umbrellas allowed at the footy
some players ran with very loose limbs that would be labelled effeminate or strange today... even running style is in part cultural
an advert on the scoreboard mentioning West Adelaide and something to do with Grand Championship. West were SANFL premiers in 1908 and 1909, so presumably were going to play the VFL premiers. Wikipedia says that they did indeed play off, at the MCG, with the result South Melbourne d West Adelaide 11.8 (74) - 7.14 (56). Interestingly SANFL (SAFA at the time) clubs won the 2 years before and 4 years after that, with all those matches going with the home team.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

Disappointing Brett, I thought you would have taken it further to call for the AFL to retrospectively award those wins as AFL titles to the Crows.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

No, and nor would I expect the AFL to award those VFL premiers AFL premiership cups retrospectively.... oh, they have.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

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