1915 VFL season
| 1915 VFL Premiership season | |
|---|---|
| Teams | 9 |
| Premiers |
Carlton (5th premiership) |
| Minor premiers |
Collingwood (4th minor premiership) |
| Matches played | 76 |
| Highest attendance | 39,343 |
| Leading Goalkicker Medallist | Jimmy Freake (Fitzroy) |
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← 1914
1916 →
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The 1915 Victorian Football League season was the 19th season of the elite Australian rules football competition.
On October 16, 1914, three weeks after the 1914 season had ended, the University Football Club dropped out of the VFL and folded.
The reasons for this decision were:
As such, the league and the club had both recognised that it was exceedingly unlikely, if not impossible, for University to be viable and/or competitive in an increasingly professional VFL if it wished to retain its status as an amateur club drawing solely from university students.
The club reformed in 1919, and to continue to play amateur football in the Metropolitan Association to this day.
It should be noted that although the two events coincided, the onset of World War I (which at this point in time had started only eleven weeks earlier and was not yet expected to escalate to the extent it did) was not given as a contributing factor in University's decision.
University players who wished to continue playing in the VFL were all cleared to Melbourne, through an informal arrangement beneficial to both clubs: University wished to see its best players playing together in the same VFL club to retain the strength of its own team for competition, and Melbourne, which had struggled for a number of years with its lack of a natural recruiting district (formal zoning was not introduced until the following year), now had exclusive access to a valuable recruiting avenue.
As a consequence of University's withdrawal, the VFL was reduced from ten to nine clubs, which introduced a bye into the weekly fixture for the first time.
In 1915, the VFL competition consisted of nine teams of 18 on-the-field players each, with no "reserves", although any of the 18 players who had left the playing field for any reason could later resume their place on the field at any time during the match.
Each team played each other twice in a home-and-away season of 18 rounds (i.e., 16 matches and 2 byes).
Once the 18 round home-and-away season had finished, the 1915 VFL Premiers were determined by the specific format and conventions of the amended "Argus system".
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