1909 Grand final footage. Sensational!!

[aardvark]

Thanks to the gent who posted this on big footy.....


1909 VFL Grand Final, South Melbourne vs Carlton - YouTube


The game starts a couple of minutes in.

[Matty10]

How good was the crowd celebration at the end!

The two different types of Carlton jumpers was interesting too. Thanks for posting this.

[ScottH]

Love the hats in the crowd.
Stripes go the wrong way.
A place kick.
A "slap" on.

Thanks for posting.

Here is The Argus article after that game.
1909:RoundGF - RWOwiki

[mcs]

All I can say is that is absolutely wonderful footage... What about the crazy handballs and the kick off the ground from the dead ball! Awesome stuff!

[aardvark]

How good was the crowd celebration at the end!

The two different types of Carlton jumpers was interesting too. Thanks for posting this.

Someone suggested that the on ballers had a different strip to the positional players. Another suggested that the players made their own jumpers hence the sashes running both ways on the Swans jumpers.

[wolftone57]

Love the hats in the crowd.
Stripes go the wrong way.
A place kick.
A "slap" on.

Thanks for posting.

Here is The Argus article after that game.
1909:RoundGF - RWOwiki

Two South Australians in the '70's & 80's were expert at that bounce out in front just before getting tackled and looking at that footage so were all the players back then. The amount of times they bounced the ball in front of them and retrieved it to go on and kick to a team-mate. Great footage. Loved the crowd carrying the players off after winning

[Swansongster]

Amazing footage.

What is astounding is how easy it is to capture this sort of footage today (e.g. the crowd panorama at the beginning - anyone with a phone can do it) but how extraordinarily difficult (and expensive) it would have been in 1909.

Thank God for the National Film Archive which preserves all of this stuff and makes it publicly available.

[Nico]

I know someone who has a mirror with the team on it.

[tantrum]

This is cool! I almost shouted "ball" a couple of times.

I remember the game well. I was the guy in the hat.

[The Big Cat]

Sobering thought that every person shown on that film is now dead! I guess the film of tomorrow's GF, if shown in 2115, will mirror our fate. (Sorry but nerves for tomorrow's game are putting me in a morbid mood and I'm trying to put everything in perspective)

[Swans500]

I feel the same...old pics or footage do that to me....a sadness, and that same thought of 100 years from now....

Sobering thought that every person shown on that film is now dead! I guess the film of tomorrow's GF, if shown in 2115, will mirror our fate. (Sorry but nerves for tomorrow's game are putting me in a morbid mood and I'm trying to put everything in perspective)

[SimonH]

Sensational stuff. I love the huge and quite elaborate advertising hoarding visible at 4:27 advertising "Grand Championship: West Adelaide" (being the readable words), i.e. that match's winner would play off in a Champions of Australia match against the obviously-already-crowned SA champions, West Adelaide.

West Adelaide were the reigning Champions of Australia in that in 1908 they won the SA flag and then knocked off VFL premiers Carlton in the end-of-season challenge match. But after winning this game, South Melb turned the tables on the South Aussies in 1909, winning 74:56 and being crowned Champions of Australia for the only time (prior to 2005!).

Due to its extremely intermittent history (a handful of one-offs in the 19th century, then 8 years from 1907-1914, then fast forward more than half a century until it ran 9 years 1968-1976), the title Champions of Australia has never got the cache it deserved. It deserved more, because in the pre-AFL era, it was the only unarguable barometer of which was the best club in Australia (while, at least after the first World War, the Vics mostly had the upper-hand in interstate club clashes, the last SA or WA team to beat a VFL team was as recently as 1986, the year before West Coast and Brisbane joined the then-VFL and a truly national club comp began to slide into existence).

In fact, 1909 turned out to be the only ever Champions of Australia match played at the MCG, and one of only two ever played in Melbourne (Adelaide monopolised hosting rights for some reason, even in the 1960s/70s phase when WA teams were involved).

Good to see within the historical record of the VFL, acknowledgment that our national game has always been just that.

[top40]

Wonderful stuff! I hope it permanently stays on you tube.

Interestingly South lost the first Grand Final in 1909. As minor premiers they were entitled to play Carlton again for a second 'challenge' Grand Final, (seen in this film), which they ultimately won.

1918 and 1933 represent the only occasions that South were never beaten in a Finals series, (they lost a game onward to victory also in 2005). So if victory awaits against Hawthorn, 2012 will be only the third time that South Melbourne/Sydney have gone through a finals series undefeated.

[Legs Akimbo]

Sobering thought that every person shown on that film is now dead! I guess the film of tomorrow's GF, if shown in 2115, will mirror our fate. (Sorry but nerves for tomorrow's game are putting me in a morbid mood and I'm trying to put everything in perspective)

?As you are, we once were. As we are, you shall be one day.?

[aardvark]

Just thought i'd bump this up for anyone who missed it during GF week.