Tasmanian State Premiership

The Tasmanian State Premiership was an Australian rules football tournament which was contested at the conclusion of the season, initially between the reigning TFL/TANFL and NTFA premiers, and then from 1950 also by the NWFU premiers, to determine an overall premier team for the state of Tasmania. The state premiership was contested 57 times between 1909 and 1978.

History

The Tasmanian State Premiership was an official Australian rules football match that determined the winner to be awarded the title of Tasmania's best domestic football team. It started as an unofficial North versus South club match in 1904, and from 1909 it gained official status on the Tasmanian football calendar.

It ran as a match between the premiers of the TFL/TANFL and NTFA, alternating between the TCA Ground (Upper Cricket Ground) and the NTCA Ground until North Hobart Oval and York Park became the premier venues in the South and North. A perpetual trophy known as the Bulldog Cup, established in 1915^[1] but not awarded until the next State Premiership in 1920,^[2] was awarded to the State Premiers throughout the competition's history.

In 1950, the NWFU was added to the state premiership on a trial basis; under the arrangements that year, the NTFA and NWFU premiers played off against each other in a preliminary final, and the winner faced the TANFL premiers.^[3] The following year, due to feelings that the football season was too long, that the state premiership tended to draw lower crowds than other special fixtures, and a dispute over whether or not the Queenstown Football Association should also have been eligible to compete, it was decided to abolish the fixture.^[4] However, the TANFL and NTFA premiers still played an informal state premiership game at the end of the 1952 and 1953 seasons, and the state premiership was formally re-instated in 1954 with the TANFL, NTFA and NWFU all competing.^[5] On a rotating basis, one of the three leagues would host and qualify directly for the final, and the other two leagues would play off in the preliminary final.

There were a total of 57 formal State Grand Finals between 1909-1978, with sixteen different clubs taking out the title: North Hobart (12), Cananore (10), City/City-South (7, plus one unofficial), New Town/Glenorchy (5, plus one unofficial), Launceston (5) and North Launceston (3, plus two unofficial) won the most titles. TANFL clubs won 33 of the 57 state premierships; NTFA clubs won 17 state premierships; and NWFU clubs won 6 State Premierships from 24 opportunities.

There were several occasions when competing teams would have a guernsey clash; in these circumstances, it was most common for each team to wear its league's intrastate representative guernsey, rather than its own club guernsey.

In 1972, 1973 and 1975, the Tasmanian State Premiers were invited to contest the Championship of Australia, a knock-out tournament which featured the premiers of the VFL, SANFL and WANFL.

By the 1970s, the State Premiership had begun to show a decline in interest from football patrons and was taken less seriously by the clubs and on 1 October 1978, the final match was played at West Park Oval between Cooee and Sandy Bay in front of a crowd of only 3,860.

Controversial results

1913 Tasmanian State Premiership

The 1913 State Premiership decider was awarded to Cananore on forfeit after Launceston objected to the central umpire engaged for the match and refused to play. The umpire in question, C. Dwyer, had umpired in the North vs South intrastate match earlier that year, and his performance had been criticised in the North.^[6] The off-field aftermath of the incident, which stretched for almost a year, resulted in a massive breakdown in diplomatic sporting relations between the North and the South. It began when the TFL imposed a suspension on the Launceston club and its players as penalty for its forfeiture.^[7] Due to the nature of affiliations between their associations, the TFL's suspensions were recognised by the Tasmanian Amateur Sports Federation – which included cricket, swimming, rowing, tennis, etc. and was affiliated with all of the equivalent mainland sporting bodies – which meant that no sporting body in Australia was permitted to stage or compete in an event featuring a banned Launceston footballer, or they themselves could face suspension.^[8] The North vs South cricket match on Boxing Day 1913, for example, was cancelled by the South because the North selected a Launceston footballer in its team.^[9] The NTFA, which supported Launceston's right to forfeit, refused to recognise the suspensions, and called off all intrastate fixtures with the South; Launceston continued to play in the 1914 NTFA season, and each other NTFA club earned its own suspension from the TFL when it played against Launceston – suspensions which were also duly ignored by the NTFA. Launceston's suspension was lifted in June 1914 after a begrudging truce was reached, in which both sides conceded "expressions of regret" and neither side extended an apology.^[10] By that stage, a farcical state of affairs existed under which many players, clubs and bodies had been issued suspensions by the TASF, and about half of the TASF's members had simply ended their affiliations to take themselves outside the influence of those suspensions.^[11]

1967 Tasmanian State Premiership

Main article: 1967 Tasmanian State Premiership

The 1967 decider between Wynyard and North Hobart at West Park Oval in Burnie was declared a "no result" after a sensational finish to the match when Wynyard fans invaded the playing surface and tore the goal posts out of the ground to prevent North Hobart's David Collins from scoring the winning goal after the siren. Collins had remained on the field with the match ball tucked up his jumper waiting for umpires, players, team officials and police to clear the playing surface, but NTFA umpire Jack Pilgrim had already left the ground under police protection; after waiting for a lengthy period of time and with the crowd parading the posts around the ground, Collins also left the field.