Albert Park Football Club (VFA)

Albert Park Football Club
Names
Full name Albert Park Football Club
Nickname(s) Parkites, Hillites
Club details
Founded 1867
Dissolved 1880
Colours      White and      red
Competition Unaffiliated until 1876
Victorian Football Association (1877–1879)
Premierships Challenge Cup: 1870 (disputed)
Ground(s) Emerald Hill Ground

Albert Park Football Club (historically styled as Albert-park) was a 19th-century Australian rules football club based in the Melbourne suburb of Albert Park. The club was one of main first-rate senior football clubs during the unaffiliated era of Victorian football.

The club was established as the South Melbourne Football Club in May 1867.[1] It changed its name to Emerald-hill in April 1868,[2] then to Albert-park in May 1869.[3] It played its home games at the Emerald-hill Ground.[4]

The club quickly became one of the main senior clubs competing at the time. The best performance in its history was in the 1870 season; it was undefeated, but it finished second for the premiership behind Melbourne, which was also undefeated.[5] The club also claimed the South Yarra Presentation Challenge Cup during the 1870 season, although the claim was disputed by the other clubs: rules required that a club win four cup matches without loss to claim permanent ownership of the Cup, but the other clubs argued that Albert-park's walk-over victory against Railway should not have counted.[6]

In 1876, the club entered an amalgamation with North Melbourne, but the amalgamation ended one year later when North Melbourne was re-established as an independent club under the name 'Hotham'.[7] In 1877, Albert-park was an inaugural senior member of the Victorian Football Association.

In 1880, Albert-park amalgamated with the neighbouring South Melbourne, which had joined the VFA as a senior club in 1879, to create a new club which carried on South Melbourne's name, and retained Albert-park's red and white colours. The merged club went on to dominate metropolitan football during the 1880s, and exists today as the professional Sydney Swans club in the Australian Football League.[8] A newer, unrelated club called the Albert Park Football Club competes today in the Victorian Amateur Football Association.

References

  1. "Thursday, 23 May 1867". The Argus. Melbourne, VIC. 23 May 1867. p. 5.
  2. "Thursday, 23 April 1868". The Argus. Melbourne, VIC. 23 April 1868. p. 5.
  3. "Football". The Australasian. VI (162). Melbourne, VIC. 8 May 1869. pp. 588–589.
  4. "Football". The Australasian. IX (224). Melbourne, VIC. 16 July 1870. p. 43.
  5. Fair Play (23 October 1870). "Football – retrospect of the season". The Australasian. IX (238). Melbourne, VIC. p. 524.
  6. Fair Play (13 August 1870). "Football chatter". The Australasian. IX (228). Melbourne, VIC. p. 204.
  7. Peter Pindar (7 October 1876). "The Football Season of 1876 – Part 1". The Australasian. XXI (549). Melbourne, VIC. p. 460.
  8. "Chapter four – Sydney or bust: the South Melbourne Football Club's 1981 relocation saga" (PDF). p. 111. Retrieved 18 October 2014.
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