1898 VFL Grand Final
| 1898 VFL Grand Final | ||||||||||||||||
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| Date | 24 September 1898 | |||||||||||||||
| Stadium | St Kilda Cricket Ground | |||||||||||||||
| Attendance | 16,538 | |||||||||||||||
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The 1898 VFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the Essendon Football Club and Fitzroy Football Club, held in Melbourne on 24 September 1898. The match was played to determine the premiers for the 1898 VFL season. Fitzroy won the match by 15 points. The game was played under atrocious ground conditions, in front of 16,538 people, at the St Kilda Cricket Ground.
The match is recognised as the first VFL Grand Final, although the term "Grand Final" was not in wide use until 1931. It was the first time that Victorian Football League premiership was decided in a final match, after the 1897 premiership was won under a different finals system by Essendon, when they finished above three other clubs in the finals series ladder.
Both the Fitzroy back-pocket Stan Reid and the Essendon full-forward Charlie Moore would later die in South Africa in active service during the Anglo-Boer War; Moore on 5 May 1901, and Reid on 23 June 1901.
During the 1898 home-and-away season, all teams played each other twice. The final end-of season ladder was:
According to the 1898 premiership system the eight teams in the VFL competition were divided into two sections based on their positions on the ladder: the first group were the teams that finished first, third, fifth, and seventh, and the second group were the teams that finished second, fourth, sixth, and eighth.
The teams in the two sections played three rounds of four round-robin matches on three consecutive Saturdays:
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