1934 VFL Season - Notable Events

Notable Events

• Bob Pratt smashes Gordon Coventry's record, kicking 150 goals in the 1934 season. He only took 13 matches to reach 100 goals.
• On 11 August, the regular South Melbourne centre half-back Laurie Nash plays at full-forward for Victoria for three quarters (the selected full-forward Bill Mohr had broken his finger in the first quarter) and kicks 18 goals in a single match against the SANFL at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Nash had kicked two goals from centre half-forward in the first quarter prior to Mohr's injury, then kicked two more in the second quarter, before dominating the match after half-time with another 14 goals.
• In round 8, Fitzroy ruckman Colin Benham scored his famous "in-off the small boy" goal.
• In the third quarter of the round 10 match between Carlton and Collingwood, played at Victoria Park in a heavy cross-wind, Syd Coventry, in his last season for Collingwood, was knocked out after an altercation with Carlton's Gordon Mackie. As Coventry was being stretchered off the field, a vicious brawl broke out involving 20 players which required assistance of team officials and the police to break up. Up to ten players were seriously injured, but only Harry Maskell of Carlton was reported; however, after an investigation by the VFL, Maskell and Mackie were both found guilty and suspended for six matches each. A goal umpire and both boundary umpires were suspended for the remainder of the season for dereliction of duty in relation to the brawl.
• North Melbourne did not win a single game for the entire season.
• It is a matter of record that Dick Reynolds won the 1934 Brownlow Medal from Haydn Bunton, Sr by a single vote. Legend has it that Bunton, who had dominated in the last match of the season, tried to "suck up to" field umpire Jack McMurray as he walked off the playing field, and that Murray, sensing a blatant and improper attempt to influence his Brownlow voting, cast his votes for three other players.