The 1927 VFL season was the 31st season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs, ran from 30 April until 1 October, and comprised an 18-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top four clubs.
In 1927, the VFL competition consisted of twelve teams of 18 on-the-field players each, with no "reserves", although any of the 18 players who had left the playing field for any reason could later resume their place on the field at any time during the match.
Teams played each other in a home-and-away season of 18 rounds; matches 12 to 17 were the "home-and-away reverse" of matches 1 to 6, and match 18 the "home-and-away reverse" of match 11.
Once the 18 round home-and-away season had finished, the 1927 VFL Premiers were determined by the specific format and conventions of the amended "Argus system".
Rules for classification: 1. premiership points; 2. percentage; 3. points for Average score: 74.1 Source: AFL Tables
Finals series
All of the 1927 finals were played at the MCG so the home team in the semi-finals and Preliminary Final is purely the higher ranked team from the ladder but in the Grand Final the home team was the team that won the Preliminary Final.
In round 9, remembered as "Duncan's Match", Carlton's centre-halfback Alex Duncan took at least 33 marks (some claim he took as many as 45) in a single match.
The Grand Final was played under atrocious weather conditions on a Melbourne Cricket Ground that resembled a swamp. The two teams scored a combined 38 points, and it was the lowest combined score of any VFL/AFL game (Grand Final or otherwise) played in the 20th century. Including the four seasons played in the 19th century (1897–1900), it was the equal 11th lowest-scoring game of all time.
The seconds premiership was won by Carlton for the second straight year. Carlton 12.22 (94) defeated South Melbourne 11.9 (75) in the challenge Grand Final, played as a stand-alone game on 8 October at the Melbourne Cricket Ground before a crowd of 4,210.[1]
Rogers, S. & Brown, A., Every Game Ever Played: VFL/AFL Results 1897–1997 (Sixth Edition), Viking Books (Ringwood), 1998. ISBN0-670-90809-6
Ross, J. (ed), 100 Years of Australian Football 1897–1996: The Complete Story of the AFL, All the Big Stories, All the Great Pictures, All the Champions, Every AFL Season Reported, Viking (Ringwood), 1996. ISBN0-670-86814-0