2017 VFL season
| 2017 VFL | |
|---|---|
| Teams | 14 |
| Premiers |
Port Melbourne (17th premiership) |
| Minor premiers |
Williamstown (11th minor premiership) |
| Leading goalkicker | Jordan Lisle (Port Melbourne) 46 goals |
| J. J. Liston Trophy | Jacob Townsend (Richmond) |
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← 2016
2018 →
|
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The 2017 Victorian Football League season is the 136th season of the Victorian Football Association/Victorian Football League Australian rules football competition. The competition began on 8 April and concluded with the Grand Final on 24 September 2017.
The Grand Final was won by Port Melbourne, who defeated Richmond by 4 points at Etihad Stadium.
At the end of the 2016 season, AFL Victoria terminated the licence of the Frankston Football Club due to its financial position, which was no longer considered viable. The club had suffered a severe downturn in the profitability of its pokies licence over the previous few years, and by 2016 the machines were generating a loss for the club. The club terminated the pokies licence in May 2016, but by that time owed more than $1,500,000, both to the state gaming regulators and other creditors. The club went into voluntary administration in August, and the club's VFL licence was terminated the following month, in the week after the VFL Grand Final. The club's immediate existence was saved when creditors, including the gaming regulators, agreed to waive more than 90% of the club's debt, and it came out of administration in late November 2016, but was still excluded from the 2017 season. The club then embarked on a campaign to assure its long-term viability, which included signing up 1200 members and working to improve its relationship with the local leagues as a pathway for Mornington Peninsula footballers into state football. The club applied for and was re-granted its VFL licence for the 2018 season, meaning it will miss only one season of football.
There had been an expectation over the previous few years that the Australian Football League's St Kilda Football Club would terminate its reserves affiliation with Sandringham at the end of 2016 and enter a stand-alone reserves team into the VFL. However, after renegotiations during 2016, a new rolling affiliation deal with no fixed term was signed the two clubs to begin in 2017. The new deal changed the nature of the affiliation, expanding St Kilda's involvement in Sandringham's operation: this included removing a stipulation from the previous agreement that no more than 14 St Kilda listed players could play in Sandringham's senior team in any given match. The deal will also result in the club playing three games per year in St Kilda colours from the 2018 season at St Kilda's former home ground Moorabbin Oval.
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