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:
“What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat, sleep, loaf around, flirt a little, dance a little. A hundred doors leading to one hall. No one knows anything about the person next to them. And when you leave, someone occupies your room, lies in your bed. That’s the end.”
—William A. Drake (1900–1965)
“Only an attitude remains:
Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
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Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)