According to the AFL, its Anzac Day football tradition dates back to 1960 when some matches rained out on the Saturday were played on the that Anzac Day Monday. Not quite.
The Easter-Anzac Day weekend was always going to be a split-round round according in the home-and-away draw released at the start of the 1960 season – four matches on the Saturday and two on the Anzac Day Monday.
The Saturday four matches were washed-out out, that much is fact.
There was bad blood between the VFL and the RSL and it went back a long way.
“If you’re fit enough for footy, you’re fit enough to fight.”
Suffice to say, there wasn’t always unbridled respect in the forces for those who kept playing footy during wartime.
We don’t dwell upon the fighting men’s opinions of war-years’ champions, and rightly so. There were plenty of mitigating circumstances for blokes not being in the military… plenty.
Still, it takes no imagination to see why blokes in the trenches got a bit antsy about the VFL playing on and handing out trophies and medals to blokes who’d stayed home and played on during wartime.
Immediately post-WWII, Anzac Day remained the property of the Returned Servicemen’s League and sacred as a Sunday was then; no money lenders in the temple, no camel trading or gambling – except two-up – or any commercial activities whatsoever, including professional sports.
By the mid-1950s hotels were pressing hard for trading exemptions – the veterans were all for that – but the RSL saw it as the thin edge of the wedge.
A compromise was reached – hotels, cinemas and non-betting sports that charged admission could operate from 1pm onwards with the day’s proceeds going to the Patriotic Fund to fund welfare services for returned servicemen and widows.
The Anzac Day Act 1958 passed into legislation during the spring session of the Victorian Parliament and came into operation on 1 April 1959.
That was timely – Anzac Day in 1959 fell on a Saturday, which would have been of significant interest to the VFL.
The pubs, cinemas and country and suburban football leagues leapt into Anzac Day trading with enthusiasm in 1959.
Not so the Victorian Football League – it took the week off.
Whatever the issue had been in 1959 was resolved by 1960.
Before it scheduled any Anzac Day games for 1960 the VFL negotiated a deal with the Bolte government that saw its charitable risk diminished somewhat – the VFL would only be liable for the “above normal” gate-takings based on historical averages.
Coincidentally, as it is this year, in 1960 Anzac Day fell on the Monday after Easter Sunday.
Victorians went into their Easter break of 1960 expecting a split-round, but then the rains came.
Premier Bolte was exceptionally pleased about that and saw it as a win-win. Perhaps God really was on his side? Now the VFL could play all six matches on Anzac Day and the VFL would not have to tear up its season’s fixture and the widows and TPIs would be the grateful beneficiaries for their windfall.
Everyone agreed on the intervening Sunday this it was a grand opportunity to repair the VFL’s fracture relationship with the Returned Servicemen’s League and play them on Anzac Day with the two already-scheduled matches.
In the face of enormous political pressure, the VFL declined to play those four matches on Anzac Day.
The VFL chose instead to play those four matches the following Saturday and push the rest of its season back a week.
Bolte was furious, as were the RSL and the editorials.
Victorians woke up on Anzac Day in 1960 to The Age booming: “Mr Bolte described the League’s decision as ‘very wrong’. I would have thought the league would have availed itself of the opportunity… and made suitable adjustments to the patriotic fund.”
The RSL was disappointed too. “I believe the league has a duty to contribute – through the public – as much as possible to our welfare funds… The VFL’s decision to play only two matches on Anzac Day is a great disappointment to the RSL.”
The opposition leader wasn’t happy with the VFL either. “Mr Stoneham criticised the VFL’s arrangement to share only its profits above normal gate-takings with the RSL. ‘The league seems a bit mercenary on this and keeping out of the spirit of the Anzac Day legislation… I personally thought the Anzac charities would have received a bigger share of the gate receipts.’”
The VFL scheduled Anzac Day matches on-and-off after 1960, but they weren’t exactly the known blockbusters, though occasionally there was a match of the round in there through the sheer unpredictability of teams’ performances.
There were 90,000 or so there in 1977 to see two non-finalists of 1976, the seventh-finishing Richmond versus the wooden-spooners in Collingwood.
Tom Hafey had left Richmond for the Pies at the end of 1976 and by Anzac Day they’d both won two and lost one.
Like Gallipoli, no one saw it coming. It was, in effect, a scheduling error.
The VFL didn’t land any blockbusters on the wrong beach for nearly twenty years, not until Kevin Sheedy brokered a peace with Victorian RSL president Bruce Ruxton.
What made the Sheedy-Ruxton handshake so noteworthy is probably not something the AFL would want recalled, but perhaps we should recall it — lest we forget.
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