1958 VFL Grand Final

Melbourne	Collingwood
9.10 (64)	12.10 (82)

	1	2	3	4
MEL	5.1	7.4	7.6	9.10 (64)
COL	2.2	7.6	12.9	12.10 (82)

Date

20 September 1958

Stadium

Melbourne Cricket Ground

Attendance

97,956

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VFL Grand Final

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The 1958 VFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the Melbourne Football Club and Collingwood Football Club, held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on 20 September 1958. It was the 62nd annual Grand Final of the Victorian Football League, staged to determine the premiers for the 1958 VFL season. The match, attended by 97,956 spectators, was won by Collingwood by 18 points, marking that club's 13th premiership victory.

This was Melbourne's fifth successive Grand Final appearance. The Demons had won the previous three premierships and were looking to equal Collingwood's 1927–1930 Premiership record. Collingwood's victory would deny the Demons that record and keep it in black-and-white hands, a record which still stands today.

Collingwood:

Melbourne:

The Collingwood Magpies’ unexpected victory did not end the Melbourne Demons’ long domination of the VFL finals, but it did preserve the Magpies cherished record of four consecutive premierships. It has been remembered, and studied, as a notable case of an underdog team overcoming multiple disadvantages, while ignoring much of the strategic advice it was offered by sports journalists and others.

The Melbourne Age described the Magpies’ victory as a "Great Comeback" which "must go down not only as one of the most important in the illustrious history of their great club, but also as one of the best on record." The Collingwood Football Club’s website claims that, "while Melbourne was regarded as the near-perfect football team, Collingwood was regarded merely as a modest team of hard-workers".

The Collingwood Club’s "AFL BIO" remarks:

Regarded by most as an ordinary team fuelled more by old-fashioned 'G and D' than by any innate football talent, embarrassingly thrashed by Melbourne in the 2nd semi final, missing both their skipper Frank Tuck and arguably their most talented player in Bill Twomey, the Magpies entered the 1958 grand final as the longest odds outsiders for years.

The 1958 finals contest between Melbourne and the Magpies in fact commenced a fortnight before the grand final, when these two teams met in the 1958 Second Semi-Final. The winner would move straight into the grand final. The loser would need to win a further "preliminary final" (against North Melbourne, the remaining team in contention) if it was to win its way back into the grand final.

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