Before North Melbourne was admitted to the VFL in 1925, there were multiple rejections.

Perhaps the most notorious of all the setbacks was in 1921; a messy situation consisting of club politics, failed mergers and ground closures.

It all started in November of 1920. The Victorian Railways Commission announced the East Melbourne Cricket Ground was to be closed at the end of 1921, allowing the Flinders Street Railyard to be expanded.

Essendon’s home ground was East Melbourne, meaning it had to find a new venue from 1922 onwards. The main ground to come under consideration was the North Melbourne Recreation Reserve (now better known as Arden Street), the home of the Northerners.

While Essendon also had the option of taking the local oval (Essendon Recreation Reserve), its most successful recruiting suburbs were North Melbourne, West Melbourne and Kensington. Therefore the club had strong ties to the area.

June of 1921 was when Essendon and North Melbourne made news in the football world.

Late in the month, Essendon formally announced it would move to the North Melbourne Recreation Reserve. In addition to the aforementioned recruiting ties, the higher gate receipts at the centrally-located ground were believed to be a key factor.

Meanwhile, the North Melbourne committee came to the conclusion it would seek to merge with Essendon for the 1922 season. Then on June 30, suddenly disbanded as a senior club.

President, Cr Brady Deveny explained the reasoning behind the movie.

“North Melbourne has for years been anxious to get into the League, and this is the only way.”

It was an incredibly risky decision by the Northerners, as the two clubs had not yet reached any agreement regarding a merger. However, the plan behind the disbanding was to allow players to transfer to Essendon before the July 1 deadline. That way, the proposed newly-merged team would be ready to go from the start of the 1922 season.

This is how Syd Barker and Charlie Hardy, North champions, ended up at Essendon.

However, one thing North hadn’t accounted for was just how desperate the VFA was to keep the North Melbourne Recreation Reserve in the competition.

Since the VFL’s inception in 1897, the league had exerted control over inner city Melbourne. Collingwood, Carlton and others were able to command high gate receipts due to their location and the result was the VFA slowly being pushed to the outer reaches of the city. The situation worsened in 1908 when Richmond left to join the VFL.

It left North Melbourne as the VFA’s most central club, so the Association naturally planned to do everything in its power to keep the ground in the league. Therefore it launched a protest to Mr Oman, the State Minister for Lands, requesting that he veto Essendon’s move to North Melbourne Recreation Reserve.

On  August 11, Mr Oman upheld the Association’s protest and refused Essendon permission to use North Melbourne Recreation Reserve. As reported in The Argus, the basis of the VFA’s proposal was that it would be a death blow if the VFL occupied all the leading grounds throughout Melbourne.

Once an appeal had been dismissed, it left the Northerners in a tricky situation. It worsened just a few days later as Essendon struck an agreement with its local council to play home games at the Essendon Recreation Reserve.

North Melbourne had no club and no team playing out of the local football ground.

There was a final twist. Considering the Association had fought so hard to keep control of North Melbourne Recreation Reserve, public opinion saw the Northerners as a certainty to be re-admitted into the VFA for 1922. In December it was proved correct, with the only condition stating the club’s committee be entirely new.

The North Melbourne players who transferred to VFL clubs during 1921 remained disqualified from the VFA and the end result was a depleted North outfit. Nevertheless the club was at least up and running once more, just three years away from its eventual admission to the VFL.

References

- The North Story
- The Argus, 12 August 1921
- The Australasian, 8 October 1921