1945 VFL Grand Final
| 1945 VFL Grand Final | ||||||||||||||||
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| Date | 29 September 1945 | |||||||||||||||
| Stadium | Princes Park | |||||||||||||||
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The 1945 VFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the South Melbourne Football Club and Carlton Football Club, held at Princes Park in Melbourne on 29 September 1945. It was the 49th annual Grand Final of the Victorian Football League, staged to determine the premiers for the 1945 VFL season. The match, attended by 62,986 spectators, was won by Carlton by a margin of 28 points, marking that club's seventh premiership victory. The game is well remembered for its extremely rough and violent nature, and has commonly been referred to as The Bloodbath.
Played only shortly after the conclusion of the second World War, the Melbourne Cricket Ground was unavailable for use, prompting the game to be played at Princes Park. The crowd of 62,986 is a record for Princes Park, and is almost double its current nominal capacity.
Carlton held a two-point lead at half time, and won the match 15.13 (103) to South Melbourne's 10.15 (75).
Carlton's 1945 premiership win was the first time since the Page-McIntyre System had been adopted in 1931 that a team from fourth place on the home-and-away ladder (i.e., a team that had no "double chance") had won the Grand Final.
South Melbourne would not contest another Grand Final until the 1996 AFL Grand Final, by which time the club was known as the Sydney Swans.
The game, played in extremely wet, muddy conditions, is remembered as "the Bloodbath" for its overall continuous violence (on the field and amongst the fans), and its plethora of crude king hits and brawls (many of which were broken up with the assistance of team officials and the police). The Melbourne tabloid newspaper The Truth called it "the most repugnant spectacle League football has ever known", with ten players reported for a total of sixteen offences.
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