1989 VFA season
| 1989 VFA Premiership Season | |
|---|---|
| Teams | 14 |
| Premiers |
Coburg (6th premiership) |
| Minor premiers |
Coburg (8th minor premiership) |
|
← 1988
1990 →
|
|
The 1989 Victorian Football Association season was the 108th season of the Australian rules football competition. It was the first season since 1960 in which the Association operated as a single-division competition, after having operated as a two-division competition with promotion and relegation between them for the previous 28 years. The premiership was won by the Coburg Football Club, after it defeated Williamstown in the Grand Final on 24 September by 20 points; it was Coburg's second premiership in a row, and its sixth and, as of 2017, last top division premiership overall.
After several years of speculation, the Association's second division was dissolved for the 1989 season and competition was re-combined into a single division, ending 28 years of partitioned competition. The future of Division 2 had been uncertain for most of the 1980s, and both the temporary competition restructure of 1982, and the proposals of the FORT review of December 1986 had sought to remove promotion and relegation between the divisions because the gap in both on-field performances and off-field viability between the strongest and weakest teams had widened. Talk of the imminent demise of Division 2 began following the folding of Waverley in March 1988, at which point the size of the Association had reduced to 17 teams;Mordialloc's withdrawal a month later reduced the size to sixteen. By the end of the year, president Brook Andersen confirmed that the 1989 season would operate as a single division; and, that while his preference was for a twelve- or fourteen-team competition, all sixteen teams would be given the opportunity to justify their positions in the competition.
The only club to withdraw between the end of 1988 and the beginning of 1989 was Geelong West. The club was heavily in debt, in large part because population growth had boosted the popularity of the Geelong Football League above that of the Association in Geelong, and it was unable to secure the $50,000 in sponsorship it needed to remain viable; and, throughout the 1980s it had been unable to field a competitive Thirds team due to difficulties in attracting juniors players willing to play in Melbourne every second week, rather than in the local Geelong competitions. The club decided that it needed to return to the local competition, where operating costs were lower, and where it would attract stronger support by performing at a more competitive level, and it formally withdrew from the Association on 27 October. The club was not permitted to join the GFL in its own right due to its proximity to the existing St Peters Football Club, but St Peters saw its own long-term viability as uncertain, so was willing to enter a merger. The resultant club was known as the Geelong West St Peters Football Club.
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