1969 VFL Season - Notable Events

Notable Events

• The VFL introduce a "kicking out of bounds on the full" rule; and, as a consequence, three full-forwards stood out during the season: Doug Wade of Geelong with 127 goals, Peter Hudson of Hawthorn with 120 goals, and Peter McKenna of Collingwood with 98 goals.
  • In round 5, Peter Hudson kicked 16 goals straight before his first miss; he kicked 16.1 for the match.
  • In round 19, Peter McKenna kicked 16 of Collingwood's 19 goals; he kicked 16.4 for the match (most of his four behinds were easy shots and could well have been goals).
• In Round 2, Carlton set the record for highest score in a game, scoring 30.30 (210) against Hawthorn. This beat Richmond's 38 year old record, set in the 1931 VFL season, by eleven points. This Carlton record stood for another 9 years, remained unbeaten until the 1978 VFL season.
• The combination of an unusually warm and dry winter and the "out of bounds on the full" rule meant that the lowest score of the season was as high as 6.9 (45). The previous record high lowest score was 42 points in 1943.
• For the first time, no team kicked five or fewer goals in a match. This has since been repeated only in 1973.
• Carlton, with Ron Barassi now retired as a player, lost its round 4 match against Collingwood at Princes Park, by 64 points, despite being 5 points ahead at half-time. Collingwood had scored 71 points to Carlton's 2 in the third quarter. It was a tough, spiteful, and vicious match with many brawls. "Percy" Jones of Carlton was reported for striking both Terry Waters and "Jerker" Jenkin of Collingwood during the first quarter; Carlton's Ricky McLean was reported for striking Collingwood's Len Thompson during the first quarter and for striking Collingwood's Brian McKenzie during the last quarter; Ted Potter was reported for striking Carlton's John Nicholls during the last quarter (Nicholls had to leave the field with an eye injury); Len Thompson was reported for striking Carlton's Vin Waite (Carlton's 19th man, who substituted for the injured Nicholls) during the last quarter. Whilst the field umpire (Ray Sleeth) was writing out the match reports he had an extended, heated clash with Carlton president George Harris; the reason for this extended clash was later evident when all of the charges against all of the players were dismissed on a technicality: the umpires had taken too long to inform the club officials of the charges after the final siren had sounded.
• On 27 July 1969, Ted Whitten turns 36. The round 16 (26 July) Footscray team of twenty contains 10 players who had not even been born when Whitten played his first game for Footscray in 1951.
• In the First Semi-Final Richmond thrashes Geelong by a VFL semi-final record margin, 25.17 (167) to 7.7 (49) in front of a record crowd of 101,233 spectators.
• In the 1969 Grand Final, Ian Owen's Richmond guernsey carried the number 52. There is no record of any Grand Final player carrying a larger number. (Owen played the entire match with a depressed fracture of the cheekbone that he had sustained in the Preliminary Final against Collingwood a week earlier.)