1885 VFA season

1885 premiership season
Teams	10
Premiers	South Melbourne (2nd premiership)
← 1884 1886 →

The 1885 Victorian Football Association season was the 9th season of the Australian rules football competition. The premiership was won by the South Melbourne Football Club. It was the club's second VFA premiership.

The senior metropolitan membership of the Association (including Geelong) increased from eight to ten clubs in 1885. The two new clubs were Richmond and University, both of which were newly formed this season.

At this time, five other provincial senior clubs were full Association members represented on the Board of Management: Ballarat, Ballarat Imperial, South Ballarat, Horsham Trades and Horsham Unions. Due to distance, these clubs played too few matches against the rest of the VFA to be considered relevant in the premiership.

The 1885 premiership was won by the South Melbourne Football Club, which finished the season undefeated from a total of 25 matches. Essendon, which lost only two of its 21 matches, finished as runner up, and the defending premiers Geelong finished third.

The below table details the playing records of the ten clubs in all matches during the 1885 season. Two sets of results are given:

The clubs are listed in the order in which they were ranked in the Sportsman newspaper. The VFA had no formal process by which the clubs were ranked, so the below order should be considered indicative only, particularly since the fixturing of matches was not standardised; however, the top three placings were later acknowledged in publications including the Football Record and are considered official.

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