1898 VFL Grand Final - Venue Selection

Venue Selection

The VFL had not anticipated a challenge final in the schedule of match fixtures that it had determined before the home-and-away season began, nor had it made any sort of a tentative venue booking to provide for such a possible eventuality. It was certainly a significant omission, given that each of the grounds were to be top-dressed and otherwise "cultivated" in preparation for the oncoming cricket season, immediately the scheduled football season was over.

Although Essendon and Fitzroy could not agree on the choice of a single venue, they suggested three mutually acceptable venues for the match:

• The Brunswick Street Oval, the home ground of Fitzroy.
• The East Melbourne Cricket Ground, the home ground of Essendon.
• The neutral South Melbourne Cricket Ground on the verge of Albert Park Lake, close to the city and well served by rail and a number of tram routes.

They referred the decision to the VFL's Match Arrangement Committee; and upon the express instructions of that Committee, the suggestions of the two teams were rejected outright, and the match was controversially scheduled to be played at the St Kilda Cricket Ground.

The St Kilda Cricket Ground was in an appalling condition. The ground had not been used since the second Saturday of the Sectional round-robin match three weeks earlier (3 September) and, since then, it had been thoroughly topdressed and "cultivated" in anticipation of the coming cricket season. Also, the cricket ground's asphalt cycling track that lay between the boundary line and the fence presented a considerable danger to the footballers.

Despite being the "challenger", the Essendon Football Club flatly refused to play in the scheduled match, declaring that it would rather forfeit the match and the premiership than play on such a dangerous surface. This view was also strongly supported by the Fitzroy Football Club, whose captain had taken the extraordinary step of signing a declaration to the effect that, in his opinion, the ground was entirely unfit to play upon.

Essendon lodged an appeal with the VFL against the Match Arrangement Committee's decision, partly on the basis of the condition of the ground, and partly because the Committee, asked to decide on one of three mutually acceptable venues, had chosen a fourth that was acceptable to neither participant.

The VFL, perhaps somewhat driven by the fact that the attraction of a finals system was one of the major reasons that the eight teams left the VFA and formed the VFL in the first place, had a special meeting to hear Essendon's appeal. It chose to endorse the Committee's decision, and did everything it could to coerce the Essendon Club into playing the match.

Essendon did not actually agree to play the match until the night before the game; and, ultimately, this "in doubt until the last minute match" was still attended by 16,538 paying spectators (it certainly would have been a much larger crowd otherwise).

The ground had been in such a dreadful condition that in the week prior to the match over 40 dray-loads of rubbish, soil and street-sweepings had been taken from the ground.

Despite all this last minute work, the condition of the playing surface at the St Kilda Cricket Ground was still atrocious on the day of the final. Players kept skating over the grass-less slippery ground for want of some sort of grip, and play was often obscured from the spectators by clouds of dust from the patched areas where the topsoil had not bound.