1943 VFL season

1943 VFL Premiership season
Jack Dyer, captain of 1943 VFL premiership winners Richmond
Teams	11
Premiers	Richmond (5th premiership)
Minor premiers	Richmond (4th minor premiership)
Matches played	84
Highest attendance	42,100
Leading Goalkicker Medallist	Fred Fanning (Melbourne)
Brownlow Medallist	Not awarded
← 1942 1944 →

The 1943 Victorian Football League season was the 47th season of the elite Australian rules football competition.

A new system was introduced so that each team received only one bye.

There were still 16 rounds. The first 11 had every team competing - after round 11, the bottom placed team would drop out, and a new byeless draw would be made.

In 1942, the VFL competition consisted of eleven teams of 18 on-the-field players each (Geelong did not field a team due to wartime rail and road transport restrictions), 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. During the first 11 rounds each team played each other once and had one bye. At round 11, the eleventh team on the ladder dropped out of the competition. In the remaining rounds (12 to 16), the other ten teams played 5 matches each.

During the 1943 season, the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the Lake Oval, and the Junction Oval were all appropriated for military use. Melbourne shared the Punt Road Oval with Richmond as their home ground, South Melbourne now shared Princes Park with Carlton as their home ground, and St. Kilda now played their home games at Toorak Park (this was possible because there was no VFA competition in 1943). Footscray, however, were able to return to the Western Oval as it was vacated by the defence authorities after a year.

Once the 16 round home-and-away season had finished, the 1943 VFL Premiers were determined by the specific format and conventions of the Page-McIntyre System.