The 1938 VFL season was the 42nd season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs, ran from 23 April until 24 September, and comprised an 18-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top four clubs.

The premiership was won by the Carlton Football Club for the sixth time, after it defeated Collingwood by 15 points in the 1938 VFL Grand Final.

Background

In 1938, the VFL competition consisted of twelve teams of 18 on-the-field players each, plus one substitute player, known as the 19th man. A player could be substituted for any reason; however, once substituted, a player could not return to the field of play under any circumstances.

Teams played each other in a home-and-away season of 18 rounds; matches 12 to 18 were the "home-and-way reverse" of matches 1 to 7.

Once the 18 round home-and-away season had finished, the 1938 VFL Premiers were determined by the specific format and conventions of the Page–McIntyre system.

Home-and-away season

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

Round 4

Round 5

Round 6

Round 7

Round 8

Round 9

Round 10

Round 11

Round 12

Round 13

Round 14

Round 15

Round 16

Round 17

Round 18

Ladder

Rules for classification: 1. premiership points; 2. percentage; 3. points for
Average score: 92.0
Source: AFL Tables

Finals series

Semi-finals

Preliminary final

Grand final

Season notes

• Geelong half-back flanker Jack Grant won the 1938 130-yard Stawell Gift in eleven and eleven-sixteenths seconds, off a handicap of 11½ yards.
• The VFL investigated an allegation from the Carlton Football Club that Collingwood rover Harry Collier had king-hit Carlton wingman Jack Carney (one of the smallest ever VFL players at 160 cm) as the teams left the field after the final bell of the Round 5 match at Victoria Park. Collier was suspended for the rest of the 1938 season.
• Jack Titus revealed that he had been offered £50 by a betting syndicate to play "dead" in Richmond's Round 8 match against South Melbourne. Richmond thrashed South Melbourne 20.15 (135) to 8.14 (62).
• Footscray becomes the first of the three teams who joined the league in 1925 to make the finals. North Melbourne would not make its first final appearance until 1945 and Hawthorn's first appearance came in 1957.
• With their win over Collingwood in Round 5, Carlton held an overall winning record against every other club in the competition. However, this would only last until Round 16 when the clubs next met, with Collingwood evening the record. With their Grand Final victory over the Magpies, Carlton once again had a winning record over every other club in combined regular season and finals matches. This would last until Round 8 of the following season, with Collingwood defeating Carlton to even their record.
• Four of the six games in Round 13 were decided by a one-point margin.^[1]

Awards

• The 1938 VFL Premiership team was Carlton.
• The VFL's leading goalkicker was Ron Todd of Collingwood with 102 goals (120 after finals).
• The Argus newspaper's "Player of the Year", was shared between Norman Ware of Footscray and Marcus Boyall of Collingwood.
• The winner of the 1938 Brownlow Medal was Dick Reynolds of Essendon with 18 votes.
• South Melbourne took the "wooden spoon" in 1938.
• The seconds premiership was won by Geelong for the second consecutive season. Geelong 12.19 (91) defeated Footscray 12.8 (80) in the Grand Final, played as a stand-alone game on Thursday 29 September (Show Day holiday) at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, before a crowd of 5,500.^[2]