1946 VFL season

1946 VFL Premiership season
Essendon captain-coach Dick Reynolds
Teams	12
Premiers	Essendon (8th premiership)
Minor premiers	Essendon (8th minor premiership)
Matches played	119
Highest attendance	77,370
Leading Goalkicker Medallist	Des Fothergill (Collingwood)
Brownlow Medallist	Don Cordner (Melbourne)
← 1945 1947 →

The 1946 Victorian Football League season was the 50th season of the elite Australian rules football competition.

In 1946, the VFL competition consisted of twelve teams of 18 on-the-field players each, plus two substitute players, known as the 19th man and the 20th 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 19 rounds; matches 12 to 19 were the "home-and-away reverse" of matches 1 to 8.

The determination of the 1946 season's fixtures were complicated by the fact that both the Melbourne Cricket Ground and the Lake Oval were still unavailable and, because of this, Melbourne shared the Punt Road Oval with Richmond as their home ground, and South Melbourne shared the Junction Oval with St Kilda as their home ground. Melbourne resumed using the Melbourne Cricket Ground as its home ground in round 17.

Once the 19 round home-and-away season had finished, the 1946 VFL Premiers were determined by the specific format and conventions of the Page-McIntyre System.

Essendon defeated Melbourne 22.18 (150) to 13.9 (87), in front of a crowd of 72,743 people. (For an explanation of scoring see Australian rules football).