The 1898 VFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the Essendon Football Club and Fitzroy Football Club, held in Melbourne on 24 September 1898. The match was played to determine the premiers for the 1898 VFL season. Fitzroy won the match by 15 points. The game was played under atrocious ground conditions, in front of 16,538 people, at the St Kilda Cricket Ground.
The match is recognised as the first VFL Grand Final, although the term "Grand Final" was not in wide use until 1931. It was the first time that Victorian Football League premiership was decided in a final match, after the 1897 premiership was won by Essendon without the need for a Grand Final.
Both the Fitzroy back-pocket Stan Reid and the Essendon full-forward Charlie Moore would later die in South Africa in active service during the Anglo-Boer War; Moore on 5 May 1901, and Reid on 23 June 1901.
Read more about 1898 VFL Grand Final: The Season, Lead-up, Venue Selection, Teams, The Match
Famous quotes containing the words grand and/or final:
“It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature to observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A poem is like a person. Though it has a family tree, it is important not because of its ancestors but because of its individuality. The poem, like any human being, is something more than its most complete analysis. Like any human being, it gives a sense of unified individuality which no summary of its qualities can reproduce; and at the same time a sense of variety which is beyond satisfactory final analysis.”
—Donald Stauffer (b. 1930)