Teams 23 Teams 11 | Teams 12 | |
Premiers Preston
(4th premiership) Minor premiers Preston
(6th minor premiership) Premiers Box Hill
(1st D2 premiership) | ||
The 1984 Victorian Football Association season was the 103rd season of the top division of the Australian rules football competition, and the 24th season of second division competition. The Division 1 premiership was won by the Preston Football Club, after it defeated Frankston in the Grand Final on 23 September by 54 points; it was Preston's fourth Division 1 premiership, and its second in a row. The Division 2 premiership was won by Box Hill; it was the club's first premiership in either division since joining the Association in 1951.
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Association membership
On 25 January, the Association's board of directors declined to renew Yarraville's membership; this decision was made unilaterally by the board of directors, and did not require a vote of club delegates. The decision followed a review of Yarraville's on-field and off-field position which concluded that the club had no prospects of long-term viability. The club had been in decline since its relegation from Division 1 in 1970, and had almost folded in 1976; it could not attract sufficient fans or sponsors from the Yarraville area, which had a declining population and an increasing ethnic demographic, and consequently struggled to finance a competitive team – in 1983, the club had won one senior game and been winless in both minor grades.
The decision ended Yarraville's 57-year affiliation with the Association, which had yielded two top division premierships (1935 and 1961). The club initially sought to compete in another competition, but ultimately disbanded. Yarraville's departure resulted in Division 2 being reduced to eleven clubs, and the Association as a whole to twenty-three clubs. Yarraville was the first of fifteen clubs to leave the Association during its period of decline between 1984 and 1996.
Division 1
The Division 1 home-and-away season was played over eighteen rounds; the top four then contested the finals under the Page–McIntyre system. The finals were played at the Junction Oval.
Awards
Division 2
The Division 2 home-and-away season was played over eighteen rounds; the top four then contested the finals under the Page–McIntyre system. The finals were played at Toorak Park.
The home-and-away fixture had already been released when Yarraville's membership was revoked. Rather than redraft the fixture, the club drawn to play Yarraville each week instead had a bye; because the fixture was unbalanced, this meant that seven clubs had two byes and four clubs had one bye. In the ladder, a bye was treated as though it were a Yarraville forfeiture: the club was awarded a win and four premiership points, was credited with the round's average winning score as 'points for', and debited the round's average losing score as 'points against'. The ladder as it is shown here distinguishes byes from wins in completed matches, but not all sources make this distinction.
Awards
Interleague matches
The Association's Division 1 and Division 2 teams each played one interleague match during the season. Gary Brice was coach of the Division 1 team for the fourth consecutive season, despite the fact that he was no longer an Association coach: he had left Port Melbourne and was now serving as a specialist coach at League club Essendon; Ray Shaw (Preston) was captain. Geoff Rosenow (Mordialloc) was coach of the Division 2 team, and Peter Allen (Berwick) was captain.