Origins of Australian football: Victoria's early history, Volume 4; Tough times: Victorian football loses its way, 1891 to 1896

Victoria's depression in the early 1890s meant that football struggled to maintain its popularity. The style of game was unattractive and many matches were marred by constant stoppages and scrimmages that were viewed by rowdy crowds. Many of Victoria’s best players left to play in Western Australia’s gold-funded football competitions. The VFA was sorely in need of reform, but club delegates could not agree on solutions to many of its most pressing issues. Football was an amateur game with regulations forbidding payments to players, but semi-professionalism was commonplace and most clubs were circumventing the rules. The tensions between supporters of the amateur tradition and those who wanted a professional future eventually led the most powerful clubs to break away from the VFA and form the Victorian Football League in 1897. A new chapter in the history of football has thus begun. With Collingwood’s admission to the VFA in 1892, the number of senior clubs stood at thirteen. Essendon became the dominant team in the 1890s with magnificent sides that brought the club four consecutive premierships. In 1895 Fitzroy won its first flag, followed by Collingwood’s first in 1896, and these two clubs were to become dominant forces in the new VFL competition that began in 1897.