It is one of the great AFL trivia questions, totally bamboozling and at first consideration simply impossible … which AFL team finished bottom of the home-and-away ladder and won the premiership in the same year?
It was Fitzroy in a 1916 season like no other, when the competition was cut to just four teams and 12 home-and-away rounds in the midst of the First World War.
In a week in which football celebrates the great Anzac Day tradition and remembers especially the footballers who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country it a story worth recounting.
The reduced 1916 season began on 6 May after Essendon, Geelong, St.Kilda, South Melbourne and University elected not to participate. Each of the four active teams played each other four times – twice at home and twice away.
Staggeringly, Fitzroy started with two wins and a draw before losing their last nine H&A games to finish bottom of a ladder. Carlton were on top with a 10-2 record, ahead of Collingwood (6-1-5), Richmond (5-7) and Fitzroy (2-1-9).
But in an astonishing turnaround, after going three months without a win, Fitzroy won three finals in a row in 22 days, effectively wining the flag twice under a finals system which gave the minor premiers a right of challenge.
Led by playing coach George Holden, Fitzroy beat Collingwood by six points in the first final before Carlton beat Richmond by three points. So Richmond were eliminated and became the official wooden-spooners, and Carlton were drawn to play Fitzroy.
Had the Blues won that game they would have been declared the premiers, but because Fitzroy won by 23 points in a game subsequently known as the ‘preliminary final’ the same teams returned a week later for a winner-takes-all ‘grand final’.
Fitzroy dominated early and after a 4-6 to 2-0 lead at quarter time led at every change and prevailed 12-13 (85) to 8-8 (56) after late goals from Horrie Jenkin and Percy Parratt.
Four players won a flag in their first season – 23-year-old Jenkin (10 games), 22-year-old Bob King (9 games), 26-year-old Fred Moore (8 games) and 20-year-old Teddy Purcell (12 games).
The team, comprising 18 players on the field and no reserves, was:-
B: Bob King, Bert Lenne, Fred Bamford
HB: Ted McDonald, Wally Johnson (capt), Harold McLennan
C: Teddy Buist, George Holden, Roy Millen
HF: Bert O’Dee, Tom Heaney, Percy Parratt
F: Tom Lowrie, Horrie Jenkin, Teddy Purcell
R: Charlie Norris, Fred Moore, George Shaw
Eleven members of the 1916 premiership side played in the 1917 grand final loss to Collingwood – Bamford, Heaney, Holden, King, Lenne, Lowrie, McDonald, Millen, Moore, Norris and Parratt.
Two players – Jenkin and Parratt – played in the 1922 premiership side coached by Vic Belcher.
And nine members of the 1916 premiership side finished in the Fitzroy 100-Game club – Parratt (195), Johnson (190), Jenkin (169), Holden (165), Lenne (157), McLennan (134), Millen (117), Shaw (117) and Norris (106).
