1988 VFA season
| 1988 VFA Premiership Season | |
|---|---|
| Teams | 16 |
| Division 1 | |
| Teams | 10 |
| Premiers |
Coburg (5th premiership) |
| Minor premiers |
Coburg (7th minor premiership) |
| Division 2 | |
| Teams | 6 |
| Premiers |
Oakleigh (2nd D2 premiership) |
| Minor premiers |
Oakleigh (4th D2 minor premiership) |
|
← 1987
1989 →
|
|
The 1988 Victorian Football Association season was the 107th season of the top division of the Australian rules football competition, and the 28th and final season of second division competition. The Division 1 premiership was won by the Coburg Football Club, after it defeated Williamstown in the Grand Final on 18 September by 27 points; it was Coburg's fifth Division 1 premiership. The final Division 2 premiership was won by Oakleigh; it was the club's second Division 2 premiership, and the last premiership ever won by the club in either division.
The Association contracted substantially in 1988. Between the end of 1987 and the end of 1988, a total of five teams left the Association:
Additionally, Moorabbin, which had been suspended in May 1987 for the remainder of that season, did not seek re-admission for 1988.
The controversial FORT review from December 1986 was considered instrumental in shaping the clubs' departures. The FORT review had recommended reducing the Association to 12 clubs in one division, with the second division operating as a suburban-level competition with no promotion or relegation between the levels; and, it explicitly named the eleven clubs it proposed to exclude from the rationalised competition. Even though the Association never received a mandate to enforce the FORT recommendations, all five of the clubs who departed saw the FORT review as partly responsible for their demise.
Caulfield, which had been relegated from Division 1 at the end of 1981, had struggled to remain competitive in Division 2. Its financial viability had been borderline throughout its time in Division 2, and the club occasionally struggled to field minor grade teams. The club was also not helped by a clubroom fire in 1985. Its situation deteriorated rapidly in 1987, when the club endured an exodus of 28 players, which it blamed on the uncertainty generated by its exclusion from the FORT blueprint, and from negative publicity generated when Association president Brook Andersen had compared the club the struggling Geelong West – it ran at a loss of $60,000 during the year and considered itself lucky to have survived.
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