1934 WANFL season

The 1934 WANFL season was the 50th season of the various incarnations of the Western Australian National Football League. Following upon numerous unsuccessful attempts to revive Midland Junction during the 1920s, Bassendean-based Swan Districts were admitted to the competition. The black and whites were more competitive than previous new clubs owing to the presence of a number of players with previous WANFL experience, including Fred Sweetapple from West Perth, captain-coach “Judda” Bee from East Fremantle and Nigel Gorn from South Fremantle, but after five promising campaigns were to endure nineteen open-age seasons without once winning as many matches as they lost.

The 1934 season saw the only finals success during the inter-war period for Perth, who became known as ‘Victoria Park’ for this season and the following as the Redlegs planned to develop a new oval at Raphael Park. Because Parliament failed to pass an Act to allow the club to acquire Raphael Park, however, Perth reverted to their old name two seasons later. Subiaco, after a stirring run to the 1933 Grand Final, fell to their worst season since 1922 due to the loss of Westy Gilbert and major injuries to Bill Brophy, Bill Bant, Lloyd Strack, Norm Stehn, Les Mills and Syd Briggs, whilst West Perth under the coaching of ex-Maroon Johnny Leonard were to win a second flag in three seasons over East Fremantle. Old Easts won a seventh successive minor premiership but gave a surprisingly poor display in the Grand Final.

The 1934 season is most famous, however, for the unprecedented goalkicking success, despite some exceptionally wet Saturdays, of spearheads George Doig and Ted Tyson, both of whom completely smashed previous WANFL goalkicking records. In the end, despite neither achieving much on a windy day in the Grand Final, Doig finished with 152 goals and Tyson with 143, tallies not bettered until Bernie Naylor did so in the early 1950s.