1967 VFA Grand Final
| 1967 VFA Division 1 Grand Final | |||||
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| Date | 24 September 1967 | ||||
| Stadium | Punt Road Oval, Melbourne, Victoria | ||||
| Broadcast in Australia | |||||
| Network | ATV-0 | ||||
The 1967 VFA Division 1 Grand Final was an Australian rules football match played between the Dandenong Redlegs and the Port Melbourne Borough. The match was held on Sunday 24 September 1967 at the Punt Road Oval in Jolimont, Melbourne, to decide the Division 1 Premiership for the 1967 Victorian Football Association season.
The match was described by historian John Devaney as "indisputably one of the most infamous matches in Australian football history". after Port Melbourne captain-coach Brian Buckley nearly led his team off the field in protest at the performance of umpire David Jackson. Dandenong went on to win the game 16.13 (109) to 12.12 (84), securing the first Division 1 premiership in Dandenong's history.
The Dandenong Football Club had joined the VFA less than ten years earlier, and had been promoted from Division 2 to Division 1 after 1962. Port Melbourne had been in the VFA since the 1880s, and had been regular finalists since the end of World War II. Port Melbourne was the defending Division 1 premier, and had contested the previous three Grand Finals.
Dandenong and Port Melbourne played each other twice during the 1967 home-and-away season. In Round 1, Port Melbourne defeated Dandenong by eight points, 14.14 (98) to 13.12 (90), with full-forward John Peck, on debut for Port Melbourne, scoring six goals; in the return match, in tough, muddy conditions, Dandenong defeated Port Melbourne by four points, 8.15 (63) to 9.5 (59), with Jim Miller kicking four goals for Dandenong.
At the end of the home and away season, Dandenong finished on top of the ladder, with Port Melbourne second. Dandenong entered the second semi-final as narrow favourites to win, but Port Melbourne won the match by 26 points, 14.7 (91) to 9.11 (65). Dandenong faced Sandringham in the preliminary final, winning 15.10 (100) to 11.15 (81), to progress to the Division 1 Grand Final for the first time in club history.
In the lead-up to the Preliminary Final, Dandenong captain-coach Allan Morrow had invited Allan Jeans, then the senior coach at the VFL's St Kilda Football Club, to lead a training session, which was focussed on maximising the team's physical strength; the session was described by players as one of the toughest the team had faced during the season. Following the success of this, Jeans was invited to sit on the Dandenong bench during the Grand Final, to allow Morrow to concentrate more fully on the play.
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