1946 VFL season
The 1946 VFL season was the 50th season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs, ran from 20 April until 5 October, and comprised a 19-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top four clubs. The league's thirds/under-19s competition played its inaugural season. The premiership was won by the Essendon Football Club for the eighth time, after it defeated by 63 points in the 1946 VFL Grand Final. Premiership season. In 1946, the VFL competition  consisted of twelve teams of 18 on-the-field players each, plus two substitute players, known as the 19th man and the 20th 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 19 rounds; matches 12 to 19 were the "home-and-away reverse" of matches 1 to 8. The determination of the 1946 season's fixtures were complicated by the fact that both the Melbourne Cricket Ground and the Lake Oval were  still unavailable and, because of this, Melbourne shared the Punt Road Oval with Richmond as their home ground, and South Melbourne shared the Junction Oval with St Kilda as their home ground. Melbourne resumed using the Melbourne Cricket Ground as its home ground in round 17. Once the 19 round home-and-away season had finished, the 1946 VFL "Premiers" were determined by the specific format and conventions of the Page–McIntyre system. Ladder. <onlyinclude></onlyinclude> Grand final. Essendon defeated Melbourne 22.18 (150) to 13.9 (87), in front of a crowd of 72,743 people. (For an explanation of scoring  see Australian rules football).