This week, we take a trip back to 1949.
One of the league’s easy-beats in its early years in the VFL, North Melbourne was slowly emerging as a strong competitor.
Just four years previously it had made it first finals campaign, but the excitement was at fever pitch at Arden Street in this season.
Having lost its first two games of the year against the highly-fancied Collingwood and Essendon sides, Wally Carter’s team quickly turned things around.
The Northerners had a true home ground advantage, winning nine of 10 at Arden Street, and while they hovered around the top four for much of the season, it was the final game that proved defining.
Against Carlton, 20-year-old Jock Spencer booted a then career-high eight goals. The top of the table Blues were left shocked as North ran out 56-point winners in front of the biggest ever crowd at the North Melbourne ground – 35,116.
The report to follow illustrated the significance of the win:
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The Northerners finished the season with 14 wins, the best result in the club’s history, and for the first time on top of the VFL ladder.
Collingwood’s loss to the Saints at Junction Oval destined it to third place, while the Blues dropped from first to second.
The result, a rematch between North and Carlton a fortnight later.
The papers said it all.
(click to enlarge)
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Over 70,000 people were at the MCG, the biggest attendance a North Melbourne team had ever played in front of.
The Football Record shows the match-ups on the day, and an interesting advertisement.
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In a game that didn’t disappoint, North Melbourne held a six-point lead at the final change before eventually falling by 12 points. Jock Spencer booted six goals.
The Northerners; performance was described as possessing ‘great courage and determination.’
‘They never gave up, and this was most noticeable in the concluding stages, when although palpably a leg-weary side, they battled on with spirit undiminished in a last desperate endeavour to save the game’, The Football Record reported.
69,281 people, a record for a Preliminary Final, squeezed into the MCG a week later to watch Essendon and North fight for a Grand Final spot.
Dick Reynolds’ team was the only outfit North hadn’t beaten in 1949, and in the first quarter it appeared the trend would continue.
Essendon led all day, but the Northerners never gave in.
10 points down late in the last quarter, there was still a cruel twist to come, as described in The North Story:
‘(Jock) Spencer shot clearly above his two close-checking opponents, McLure and Brittingham, and brought down the mark.
Then followed a sensation. That yelling, screaming, shouting throng was stunned into instant silence. Umpire Jack McMurray junior coolly walked up and awarded a free kick to McClure. All the North Melbourne supporters could do was to stand there in agonised amazement.
Apparently the umpire considered that Spencer had unlawfully planted his feet in his opponent’s back, even though the rule clearly allows a player to take a mark on another’s back provided he is going for the ball. Right or wrong however, the North player had no option but to get on with the game.’
A goal to Don Condon narrowed the margin to five, but with Essendon’s spirits rejuvenated it ran out the dying moments of the game the better to win by 17 points.
Lou Richards later described the events in his biography:
“… this decision could well have cost them their chance of winning their first ever premiership, because in the Grand Final Carlton did not live up to their earlier form and Essendon took the flag with a runaway 18.17 to 6.16 win.”
Unfortunately it wasn’t to be in 1949, and despite its first Grand Final appearance a year later, it wasn’t until 1975 North won its first premiership.
It was quite fitting that the club’s first minor premiership and most successful season since its induction into the VFL was followed by the introduction of the ‘Kangaroos’ nickname in 1950.
