1977 VFL season

1977 VFL Premiership season
Teams	12
Premiers	North Melbourne (2nd premiership)
Minor premiers	Collingwood (17th minor premiership)
Night series	Hawthorn (1st Night series win)
Matches played	139
Attendance	3,304,221 (23,771 per match)
Highest attendance	108,224
Coleman Medallist	Peter Hudson (Hawthorn)
Brownlow Medallist	Graham Teasdale (South Melbourne)
← 1976 1978 →

The 1977 Victorian Football League season was the 81st season of the elite Australian rules football competition.

Night Series

Hawthorn defeated Carlton 14.11 (95) to 11.5 (71) in the Final.

Premiership 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

1977 VFL Ladder
	TEAM	P	W	L	D	PF	PA	%	PTS
1	Collingwood	22	18	4	0	2560	1959	130.68	72
2	Hawthorn	22	17	5	0	2618	1959	133.64	68
3	North Melbourne (P)	22	15	7	0	2124	1803	117.80	60
4	Richmond	22	14	7	1	2370	2085	113.67	58
5	South Melbourne	22	13	8	1	2148	1942	110.61	54
6	Carlton	22	13	9	0	2081	1859	111.94	52
7	Footscray	22	10	11	1	2170	2141	101.35	42
8	Geelong	22	8	14	0	1930	2333	82.73	32
9	Essendon	22	7	14	1	2085	2518	82.80	30
10	Fitzroy	22	6	16	0	2072	2474	83.75	24
11	Melbourne	22	5	17	0	2117	2492	84.95	20
12	St Kilda	22	3	17	2	1966	2676	73.47	16
Key: P = Played, W = Won, L = Lost, D = Drawn, PF = Points for, PA = Points against

Finals

Elimination Final

	Elimination Final
3 September 2:30pm	Richmond	def.	South Melbourne	VFL Park (Crowd: 63,663)
	5.4 (34) 7.6 (48) 11.8 (74) 13.10 (88)	Q1 Q2 Q3 Final	2.3 (15) 6.7 (43) 6.10 (46) 7.12 (54)	Umpires: Deller, Smith Television broadcast: Seven Network
Edwards, Monteath, Cloke, Dunne 2 Malthouse, Noonan, Bartlett, Raines, Roberts 1		Goals	2 Lambert 1 Goss, Browning, Teasdale, Daniher, Morrison
Bourke, Cloke, Bartlett, Malthouse, Monteath, Sheedy, Edwards		Best	Round, McLeish, Browning, Morrison, Rantall, O'Neill, Teasdale

Qualifying Final

Semi Finals

Preliminary Final

Grand final

North Melbourne drew with Collingwood 9.22 (76) to 10.16 (76), in front of a crowd of 108,244 people.

A replay was held, and North Melbourne defeated Collingwood 21.25 (151) to 19.10 (124) in front of a crowd of 98,491 people. (For an explanation of scoring see Australian rules football).

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.^[1]

Notable events

• In Round 6, Hawthorn set records against St. Kilda of 41 behinds (previous highest 34) and 66 scoring shots (previous highest 60).
• 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.temo
• Collingwood became the first VFL/AFL team to win the Minor Premiership after winning the wooden spoon the year before.
• North Melbourne is the only team to play twenty-seven matches in a VFL/AFL season.^[2] With the abolition of Grand Final Replays in 2016, this record will remain indefinitely, as the current AFL fixture allows for a maximum of 26 matches (22 home and away matches plus four finals). John Cassin was the only player to play in all 27 matches.

See also

• McIntyre "Final Five" system

References

1. "All the scores". The Age. Melbourne, VIC. 26 September 1977. p. 30.
2. Rodgers, Stephen (1996). 100 Years of AFL players - Volume 3. Melbourne: East-Side Printing. p. 1586. ISBN 0646300164.

• Stephen Rogers and Ashley Brown (1998). Every Game Ever Played. 6th ed. Victoria: Penguin Books.
• 1977 Season - AFL Tables