1933 VFL Season - Notable Events

Notable Events

• "Checker" Hughes takes over as coach of Melbourne and renames them "The Demons" from "The Fuchsias."
• In round 5, St Kilda defeats North Melbourne 13.19 (97) to 11.17 (83), despite having only 15 players left at the end of a brutal match (which was stopped at one stage because a wild brawl, instigated by the North Melbourne players, had erupted in the centre): captain Clarrie Hindson had a broken ankle, full-forward Bill Mohr had two broken ribs, forward Jack Anderson had been knocked unconscious, centreman W.C. "Billy" Roberts was felled once, recovered, and then was felled a second time, and rover Roy "Tiger" Bence was also knocked out.
  • The St Kilda President, Gallipoli veteran and naval war hero Commander Fred Arlington-Burke, described St Kilda's 15 man victory as the greatest moral victory in the club's history, A "Badge of Courage" was struck by the Football Club and was awarded to each of the players that took part in the match. The medallion is silver, coin shaped, with coin-like reeding around its outer perimeter (with no cicumferential milling), with a St Kilda Football Club badge affixed to it, and the following inscription: "St KILDA DEFEATED Nth MELBOURNE WITH 15 MEN MAY 27th 1933". (Photograph of Medal at Ross, 1996, p. 140)
• In round 8, Essendon experimented with a siren, rather than a bell at Windy Hill.

• In the 1933 Interstate Carnival, held in Sydney, the Victorian team wins all five of its matches.
• During the 1933 Carnival, the Australian National Football Council considered a proposal from the New South Wales Rugby Football League that the two codes merge and play a single, Australian "national" game. A secret trial match of this proposed "national" game, conducted during the carnival, was a confused and total failure. The ANFC subsequently rejected the proposal.
• The President of the South Melbourne Football Club, grocery magnate Archie Crofts, had brought so many interstate players to South Melbourne — with the promise of a well-paid regular job in one of the Crofts Grocery chain stores in addition to their receiving maximum playing and training fees allowable under the "Coulter Law" — that the 1933 team was christened "The Foreign Legion".
  • Those comprising the "Foreign Legion" were Bert Beard, John Bowe, Brighton Diggins, Bill Faul, and Jim O'Meara from Western Australia, Ossie Bertram, Wilbur Harris, and Jack Wade from South Australia, and Frank Davies and Laurie Nash from Tasmania.
  • Whilst South Melbourne played in four consecutive Grand Finals (1933–1936), it only won a premiership in 1933.
  • South Melbourne's victory was its last until 2005, when the relocated Sydney Swans won its first premiership in 72 years, the longest drought in VFL/AFL history.
• North Melbourne's win over Collingwood in Round 6 was the first by one of the three 1925 entrants (Footscray, Hawthorn, North Melbourne) over the Magpies. Prior to that, Collingwood had won the first 37 meetings against the three newest clubs. Footscray's first win over Collingwood came in Round 9 of this year, but Hawthorn would not record its first win over Collingwood until Round 5 of the 1942 VFL season (in the 30th regular-season meeting between the two clubs).