1942 VFL season

1942 VFL Premiership season
Lindsay White
Teams	11
Premiers	Essendon (7th premiership)
Minor premiers	Essendon (7th minor premiership)
Matches played	84
Highest attendance	49,000
Leading Goalkicker Medallist	Lindsay White (South Melbourne)
Brownlow Medallist	Not awarded
← 1941 1943 →

The 1942 Victorian Football League season was the 46th season of the elite Australian rules football competition.

World War II had many effects on the organisation of football in Australia:

In 1942, the VFL competition consisted of eleven teams of 18 on-the-field players each, plus one substitute player, known as the 19th man. A player could be substituted for any reason; however, once substituted, a player could not return to the field of play under any circumstances.

Teams played each other in a home-and-away season of 16 rounds.

The determination of the 1942 season’s fixtures was complicated by the fact that when the VFL decided to proceed with senior football on April 1, it was not known which grounds would be available. All 1941 grounds except Windy Hill and the Brunswick Street Oval were candidates for long-term appropriation by the military, and the VFL announced that unless three grounds were available, it would not play the season. Consequently, each round’s fixture through the first eleven weeks was set only on the previous Wednesday week, rather than being pre-determined at the start of the season. Ultimately the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the Lake Oval, the Western Oval, and the Junction Oval all became unavailable; but, several Victorian Football Association grounds became available when the VFA announced on 21 April that it was going into recess, resulting in St Kilda and Footscray moving to Toorak Park and Yarraville Oval respectively, and the remaining ground losses were managed by Melbourne sharing the Punt Road Oval with Richmond and South Melbourne sharing Princes Park with Carlton.

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