Australian rules football schism (1938–1949)


The Australian rules football schism was a period of division in the rules and governance of Australian rules football, primarily in the sport's traditional heartland of Melbourne, and to lesser extents in North West Tasmania and parts of regional Victoria. The schism existed primarily between Melbourne's pre-eminent league, the Victorian Football League, and its secondary league, the Victorian Football Association. In the context of VFA history, this period is often referred to as the throw-pass era.
The schism began in 1938, when the VFA introduced several rule changes, including legalising throwing of the football in general play. The changes helped to speed up the game, and promoted more run-and-carry play in an era which had previously been dominated by a long kicking style. Additionally, the VFA ended its player transfer agreement with the VFL, and aggressively recruited star players from the VFL. These changes gave the VFA for the first time in many years an on-field product which could compete with the VFL for public interest, and it made the 1940s one of the most successful periods in the VFA's history. By the mid-1940s, the VFA had copyrighted its rules, and was considered to be playing its own distinct code of Australian rules football.
The VFA's actions created a division in the administrative structure of the sport in Victoria. Throughout the 1940s, the VFL and VFA worked towards ending the schism, as they both believed that a single controlling body playing under a uniform set of rules was in the best interests of football as a whole. Over several years, the VFL and VFA unsuccessfully negotiated options, including for the two competitions to be amalgamated into one. The schism ended after the 1949 season, when the VFA accepted the national standard rules, in exchange for receiving its own seat on the Australian National Football Council, which ultimately gave it a voice in the administration of the game at the national level. Although the throw-pass itself did not survive beyond the schism, other innovations from the throw-pass era helped to shape the national rules of the game.

Background

Australian rules football had been played in Victoria since 1858, and was initially administered in an ad hoc manner by the active clubs, who agreed upon rules and administrative matters through informal meetings of club secretaries. In 1877, the Victorian Football Association was established to provide formal and binding administration of the game in Victoria. By 1888, the VFA had brought a formal structure to its on-field competition, including the system under which the premiership was decided, and thus the VFA was serving as both the game's administrative body and as its top senior competition in Victoria.
In October 1896, eight of the VFA's thirteen clubs seceded and established the Victorian Football League. The VFL comprised the strongest clubs in Melbourne, in large part because its clubs were based in the more densely populated inner suburbs where potential gate takings were higher, while the VFA's clubs were generally based further from the city centre; thus the VFL became the pre-eminent football competition and administrative body in Victoria. The strongest VFA clubs regularly sought admission to the more lucrative VFL, and four clubs gained admission over the following decades, on each occasion quelling a brief resurgence in the VFA's popularity. As a matter of comparison of the two competitions' strengths, the average home-and-away crowds in the 1937 season were around 14,300 in the VFL and 2,400 in the VFA. Both the VFL and VFA played all matches on Saturday afternoons at the time, so the two were in direct competition with each other for spectators. It was widely acknowledged that the VFL was the higher standard competition, and even the VFA executive was prepared to acknowledge that only a handful of VFA players had the ability to succeed as senior VFL players.
The responsibility for administration of the game at the national level fell at this time to the Australian National Football Council. Formed in 1906, the ANFC comprised one delegate from each state, and later added one from Canberra and one representing amateur football nationwide. The ANFC was the custodian of the official laws of the game, which all of its affiliated competitions were required to use. The council's purpose was to provide a united control structure for the sport, and to help to promote the interests of the game as a whole; as part of this, it took levies from the southern states and distributed grants to the northern states to help them develop the game in rugby territory. Victoria was represented on the ANFC by the VFL. The VFA was not part of the ANFC; but, it had a formal relationship with the VFL governed by an agreement signed between them in 1931, and the terms of that agreement indirectly brought the VFA under the ANFC's influence.

Establishment of the throw-pass code

The mid-1930s had been a period of declining popularity for football in Victoria. Both the VFA and VFL were enduring financial problems, to the point where some of the weaker VFL teams were being kept afloat only by the dividends they received from finals gates. The VFA decided that it would make a series of rule changes to make the game more spectacular to try to reverse this trend. The first set of recommendations was made by its appointed rules committee in early October 1937, and the final decision on which rules to include was made at a meeting of club delegates in February 1938.
The rule changes which were made were:
Another key rule which was not included amongst the original 1938 changes, but which was introduced during the 1939 season was:
Overall, the committee believed the changes would retain the speed, long kicking and high marking which were thought to be the game's most attractive features, but reduce on-field congestion and roughness and make the rules simpler for the umpire to apply. Collectively, the rules became known as the VFA rules, Association rules, more informally as the throw-pass rules, or pejoratively as throw-ball; the traditional rules were known as the national rules, League rules or ANFC rules.

Rejected rules

The original proposal put forward by the rules committee had gone significantly further. Additional rules which were put forward in 1938, but were rejected by the club delegates, were:

Effect on the game

Observers of the new rules quickly lauded them for having their intended effects of speeding up the game, reducing congestion and making the rules easier to police consistently. The Australasian sportswriter Reginald Wilmot noted that the rules helped to reward the ball-winner, compared with the old holding the ball rules which favoured the tackler. Many pundits had been worried that throw-passing would lead to a reduction in long kicking and high marking, but noted that in practice, throw-passes were seldom over a distance greater than ten yards, and long kicking remained prominent. VFL champion player and coach Dan Minogue lauded the boundary throw-in rule as encouraging more contested football near the boundary line, rather than seeing players content to watch the ball roll out of bounds knowing that they would receive a free kick. Port Adelaide secretary Charles Hayter commented that by encouraging more play along the boundary lines, the rules brought the action closer to the spectators. Several players liked that the reduced number of scrimmages would reduce the risk of injury, and a reduction in rough play and thuggery was noted.
Not all were convinced about the merits of the rules, particularly the throw-pass, after seeing them in action. Many were still concerned that over time the ease of throwing the ball would reduce long kicking and high marking. Champion North Adelaide full-forward Ken Farmer feared that in the extreme case it could result in a game played by seventeen basketballers and a full-forward. Several observers thought the rule made the game too easy, and while that catered well to VFA players, the higher standard of players in the top state leagues could be equally effective with a traditional handpass or flick-pass as they could be with a throw-pass. South Australian sportswriter Steve McKee feared that allowing the throw-pass would rob the game of its individuality, which could affect its ability to compete with and distinguish itself from rival sports in the long term; and that the game would become dominated by smaller, faster players, making it impossible for larger or slower players to have a successful top level career. Wilmot lamented that the agility and evasion displayed by VFL players to avoid tackles was largely absent from the VFA code, with players instead able to execute a simple throw to avoid a tackle. Some observers saw the reduction in rough play as a disadvantage of the new code rather than an advantage, dismissing the VFA code as a "sissy" version of Australian rules football.
A statistical analysis of the 1938 VFA Grand Final between Brunswick and Brighton was published and compared with the averages from ten VFL matches around the same time to illustrate the effect that the rule changes had on making the game more non-stop. It confirmed that the number of kicks had remained steady or even increased as a result of the changes, with a total of 650 kicks and 173 marks recorded in the VFA Grand Final compared with an average of 596 kicks and 160 marks in the VFL matches. It also showed that the ability to throw the ball had more than doubled the use of handpassing, with a total of 160 throw-passes recorded in the VFA Grand Final compared with only 76 handpasses in the VFL games; this extent of handpassing was unheard of under the ANFC rules, and it was not until the 1979 VFL season more than four decades later that VFL matches would average so many handpasses per game. There were only six ball-ups in the VFA Grand Final, and 38 boundary throw-ins. The average score per team per game increased by almost three goals, from 84.7 to 100.5, in the first season under throw-pass rules.
Crowds at VFA games enjoyed a substantial increase under throw-pass rules. Across the first ten rounds of 1938, the average attendance at VFA games was 3,600, compared with 2,400 for the corresponding rounds in 1937. Another 22% increase in crowds was enjoyed in 1939, and club memberships likewise increased. The VFA took advantage of this new found interest by extending the season from sixteen games to twenty in 1939, moving the Grand Final to the Saturday after the VFL Grand Final and securing the Melbourne Cricket Ground as its venue; with a larger venue and no VFL counter-attraction, the 1939 VFA Grand Final between Brunswick and Williamstown attracted the all-time VFA record attendance of 47,098, despite drizzly weather. Many clubs enjoyed record home crowds over the next few years. Despite the increased crowds, overall attendances were still only about a quarter of those attracted by the VFL, which averaged between 15,000 and 16,000 to home-and-away games in 1938 and 1939.

Response of other competitions

The new rules generated the interest of other competitions, and to promote its new code, VFA teams played exhibition matches, including in Geelong, Camperdown and Frankston. An important match between Camberwell and a composite team of the South Australian Amateur Football League was played in August 1938 at the Adelaide Oval to give South Australian officials the opportunity to see the new rules in action.
Several small competitions in Victoria, usually the secondary competitions in their district, followed the VFA's lead and adopted the throw-pass rules for the 1938 season, even before seeing them in action: these included the Sale District Football Association, the VFA Sub-Districts Association, and the Bendigo Football Association. Interest in the new code spread, and by 1939 the Bairnsdale and Bruthen District League and the Hume Highway Football Association had adopted the rules. The Yallourn District Amateur Association had adopted the rules by 1941. Many other leagues held votes to determine whether or not to switch codes. More significantly, many of Victoria's schools associations also adopted the VFA's rules over its first few years, giving the new code a strong development ground for the future: the Secondary Schools adopted them in 1938, the Technical Schools adopted them in 1939 and the Public Schools adopted them in 1940.
The new rules also gained penetration in Tasmania, particularly in North West Tasmania. Tasmanian administrators had long advocated introducing throwing the ball, having unsuccessfully raised the motion at several ANFC meetings since 1911, so that there was interest in the new code in Tasmania was natural. The first competition there to adopt them was the North Western Football Association, the second-tier competition on Tasmania's north-western coast, which adopted the rules halfway through the 1938 season. It was a boon to the NWFA, and in 1939 its size increased from five clubs to nine. The smaller nearby Wilmot and Chudleigh Football Associations also adopted the new rules, and a motion in 1940 to adopt the rules in the Darwin Football Association, also based in North West Tasmania, failed by a single vote. However, North West Tasmania's preeminent senior competition, the North West Football Union, remained loyal to the national code.
In October 1938, the ANFC met and discussed whether or not to alter the national rules to incorporate the VFA's changes. The motion to legalise the throw-pass nationally was once again raised by Tasmania, but it again lapsed after no other state would second it. The delegates from New South Wales and Canberra were concerned that the change would make the game unable to distinguish itself from the rival rugby codes which were popular in their regions; and Victoria and Western Australia were strongly opposed, believing it would take the difficulty and skill out of the game; South Australia, which had expressed favour for the throw-pass, also declined to second the motion, preferring to see the rule in action in the VFA for at least another year before making a commitment.
At the same conference in October 1938, the ANFC agreed to adopt two of the VFA's other key rules which had a significant effect on gameplay: altering the holding the ball rule to eliminate the provision for a player to drop the ball when tackled; and re-introducing the boundary throw-in whenever the ball went out of bounds, except when put out deliberately. Both rule changes have become fundamental to modern Australian rules football: the modern holding the ball rule, as it applies to a player who has had an opportunity to dispose of the ball prior to being tackled, is practically unchanged from the 1939 interpretation; and other than the introduction in 1970 of a free kick for kicking out of bounds on the full, the boundary throw-in rule remains unchanged.
The rules the VFA had introduced to curb rough or time-wasting play were not immediately adopted by the ANFC, but were adopted over the following decades. The ANFC adopted the downfield free kick into its rules in 1945, and it adopted the fifteen-yard penalty for time-wasting or cribbing over the mark in 1954; both rules remain part of modern football, except that the distance of the fifteen-yard penalty was extended to fifty metres in 1988.

Effect on full forwards

The change to the out of bounds rule in the national code is often considered to have brought an end to the era of dominant full-forwards which had existed during the 1930s: century goalkickers such as Gordon Coventry and Bob Pratt in the VFL, Frank Seymour in the VFA, Ken Farmer in South Australia and George Doig in Western Australia had been common during the 1930s, but were decidedly less common over the next thirty years, generally put down to the fact that play could be more safely directed along the boundary lines, bringing the forward pockets and half forward flankers into play and resulting in a wider spread of goalkickers.
In spite of this, the four VFA seasons played between 1939 and 1945 under throw-pass rules featured some of the most dominant goalkicking displays by full forwards in the game's history. George Hawkins won the 1939 goalkicking title with 164 goals; Ted Freyer won the 1940 title with 157 goals; Bob Pratt won the 1941 title with 183 goals; and Ron Todd won the 1945 title with 188 goals – all of which exceeded the then-record of 152 goals set under national rules by George Doig in 1934. Many other high totals were recorded in those four seasons. Sportswriters noted that Freyer's dominance in 1940 came from Port Melbourne adopting a straight-down-the-middle style of play in spite of changed boundary rules, but it was surmised that the sheer skill of those particular forwards playing in the much lower standard VFA teams, particularly the war-weakened teams from 1940 until 1945, was a major contributor to their dominance. These historic goalkicking feats were confined to those four seasons; outside that period, the most goals scored in a VFA season during the throw-pass era was 114, by Todd in 1946.

Player transfers

Permit reciprocity

Within any given football competition, a player wishing to switch to a new club was required to obtain a clearance from his old club and a permit from the league's permit committee; the competition could enforce these transfer rules by issuing fines to or docking premiership points from clubs who fielded players without a valid clearance. However, these rules were inherently enforceable only within the same competition; to make a permit and clearance system enforceable between different competitions, separate legal agreements were needed between them under which each competition agreed to penalise its own clubs if they fielded players from the other competition without a clearance. Amongst the major state leagues, the ANFC provided a framework for permit reciprocity agreements as a condition of affiliation; but, since the VFA was not ANFC-affiliated, a separate agreement was needed between the VFA and VFL if clearances were to be recognised between them. Permit reciprocity was not always in the best interests of both competitions, and so such agreements had existed on-and-off between them for the previous few decades: one such agreement lasted from 1913 until 1918; the next was signed in 1923, and was broken in early 1925 as part of the competitions' 1925 expansions; and the agreement that was current at the start of the schism had been signed in 1931. The 1931 agreement was more extensive than simply covering permit reciprocity; it was intended to foster co-operation between the two competitions, and provide somewhat unified control of football in Victoria.

Termination of the agreement

On 15 November 1937, the VFA voted to end the 1931 agreement. The VFA recognised that it would be impractical to maintain a unified control agreement if it were playing under such different rules. The VFA had also grown frustrated with what it saw as a lack of assistance from the VFL, particularly as the VFA had been struggling in 1936 and 1937, when it felt that the agreement compelled the VFL to make its best endeavours to help – although the VFL, in its defence, was having its own difficulties at the same time. Overall, the VFA felt that it would be better able to manage its own interests if not bound by the agreement. With the agreement terminated, clubs now had the freedom to recruit players from the VFL to the VFA, and vice versa, without clearances and would have no fear of legal recourse.
The situation was different for players. A player who crossed without a clearance was in breach of his contract with his original league, as the contract prohibited playing in any other football competition in Victoria without a clearance; this clause was valid regardless of whether or not a permit reciprocity agreement existed between those competitions. Both the VFA and the VFL gave three year suspensions to any of their players who crossed to their rival without a clearance, but these suspensions were valid only in the original competition and did not prevent the player from playing and earning money at his new club. In practice, this meant that a player could switch competitions freely, but that as long as the schism persisted it would almost certainly be a permanent switch, as his suspension would prevent him from returning unless he stood out of all football for three years. The VFL considered its legal options to seek further injunctions against players who crossed to the VFA without a clearance; but it was not certain that the relevant clause in the contract would hold up in court, and decided not to proceed with legal action.
Although players were permitted to cross without a clearance, not all transfers occurred in this manner, particularly in the first years of the schism; nevertheless, the changes gave players a stronger bargaining chip in negotiations. If a player demonstrated a willingness to accept a VFL suspension by crossing to the VFA without a clearance, then it was in his VFL club's best interests to grant the clearance in the hope that he might later return, rather than allow him to take a suspension which would prevent that from occurring. Not all clubs followed this pragmatic approach: South Melbourne, for example, made a point of refusing clearances to players unless they had given the club ten years of service, and it consequently lost many players without clearances. Many players still sought clearances, as they were keen to keep their options to return to the VFL open, and some turned down big VFA offers if their clearances weren't granted; Jack Dyer, for example, was denied a clearance to Yarraville in 1940, and he opted not to cross without a clearance because he harboured ambitions to return to be playing-coach of.
There could be lucrative financial incentives for star players to cross from the VFL to the VFA. VFL payment laws were very prescriptive, limiting match payments to £4 per match; and prohibiting the payment of lump sums either as inducements for players, or to their clubs to secure clearances. The VFA had no such limitations. Additionally, some clubs, such as Collingwood, had strict internal policies to pay all players equally, making it impossible for star VFL players to negotiate for higher pay even within the limitations of the Coulter Laws. This meant that VFA clubs had the ability to recruit a small number of the VFL's best players by offering much more than they could or would be offered in the VFL, and it was this which drew some of the game's star players to the new code.
The end of the agreement also gave VFA players the freedom to cross to the VFL. A capable rank-and-file player would earn more in base player payments under the Coulter Laws than he would earn in the VFA, if he could command a regular senior place in the VFL. However, players who switched without a clearance risked being stuck in the VFL seconds with no ability to return to the VFA seniors if they weren't good enough for regular senior selection. Andy Angwin was the first player to transfer to the VFL without a clearance, switching from Port Melbourne to in 1938.

Notable League players to switch codes

The VFA's new code gained significant publicity and credibility when it was able to convince VFL players, including some of the best players of the era and even some club captains, to defect. There were four particularly significant transfers involving superstar players:
Other notable VFL players to switch to the VFA, with or without clearances, were:
Nash, Pratt, Todd, Fothergill, Vallence, Titus, Matthews, both Collier brothers, and Roy Cazaly are all inductees in the Australian Football Hall of Fame, with Pratt and Cazaly recognised in the Legend category. Only in Todd's case is his VFA career acknowledged in his citation.

Effect of World War II

Although World War II began in September 1939, its impact on football was not substantially felt until 1942, when most suburban and country leagues went into recess. The VFL and VFA both intended to continue operating into the 1942 season; but on 20 April, only a couple of weeks out from the opening round, the VFA decided to cancel the season, citing the unavailability of grounds, the lack of players due to enlistments, and the lack of committeemen due to the increased workload required to support the war effort. The 1943 and 1944 seasons were also cancelled, resulting in a three-year hiatus from competition. The VFA's committee continued to operate in an administrative capacity during this time. The VFL continued to stage its premiership uninterrupted throughout the war, with the only exception being that was unable to compete in 1942 and 1943 due to travel restrictions. All of the smaller competitions which had adopted the VFA's rules were also in recess, so League rules was now the only form of Australian rules football being played in Australia, putting an abrupt halt to the growth of the VFA code after only four years.
With the VFA in recess, many VFA players sought to play in the VFL. Although there was still no long-term reciprocal clearance agreement between the bodies, the VFA and VFL agreed to a system of temporary clearances to last during the war, whereby any players cleared by the VFA to the VFL would be required to return to VFA when it reformed; the VFA granted around 200 temporary clearances under this agreement. However, players who had been disqualified from the VFL for crossing to the VFA without a clearance before the war remained ineligible to cross back to the VFL during the war; Todd, Fothergill and Wilson all made appeals to have their VFL disqualifications overturned in 1943, but their appeals were dismissed.

Resumption after the war

The VFA resumed competition under the throw-pass rules in 1945. In accordance with their wartime agreement, VFL permits for VFA players were revoked; however, as there was no other reciprocal clearance agreement between the bodies, there was nothing to prevent the VFL from immediately issuing new permits to those same players if they wished to remain in the VFL and were willing incur a suspension from the VFA. Both the VFA and the VFL increased their suspensions for players who switched competition without a clearance from three years to five years.
Additionally, the VFA lost many of the star pre-war recruits it had secured without clearances back to the VFL. Under the terms of their suspensions from the VFL, the players were required to stand out of all football, not just VFL football, for three years before their VFL suspensions could be lifted. Had there been no war interruption, it is unlikely that any suspended players would ever have met this qualification; but with the VFA in recess for three years, all such players were now eligible to return to the VFL. One stumbling block to this was the VFL's treatment of games arranged within the armed services during the war: in 1943, the VFL had ruled that such games were considered competitive, and therefore a player who had played in a services game was deemed not to have stood out of football during the war; but this ruling was overturned in March 1945, which on the eve of the season made around forty players who had played only in services matches suddenly eligible to return to their original VFL clubs. After the war-time hiatus, the VFA clubs had less money to offer star players, and so many opted to take the opportunity to return to the VFL. Of the VFA's four superstar recruits, Nash, Fothergill and Pratt all returned to the VFL; Todd remained in the VFA for the rest of the throw-pass era.
Other competitions which had played under the VFA rules before the war also resumed playing in 1945 or 1946, but some reverted to League rules, including the North Western Football Association, which had been the code's second-most prominent competition and its main foothold in Tasmania, and Victoria's public schools, a key development competition. This left the VFA with significantly reduced market penetration for its rules. The King Island Football Association, the small and remote league on the Bass Strait island of King Island, adopted the Association rules in 1946, but otherwise growth of the VFA code after the war was minimal.

Final years of throw-pass football

Between 1945 and 1949, the VFA continued to operate under throw-pass rules. Two notable rule changes were made in 1947: a free kick was introduced for "kicking in danger" – that is, kicking recklessly at the ball where there is a strong risk of kicking an opposing player in the process, even if no contact is made with the opposing player – and shepherding was banned in ruck contests. The VFA continued to court country leagues in an attempt to spread its code, and to that end staged exhibition matches in country Victoria and small interstate markets from 1945 until 1947, which included games in Broken Hill, Launceston, Bendigo, Hamilton, Echuca, Bairnsdale and Mooroopna. Games were not always supported by proponents of the ANFC code; the Tasmanian Australian National Football League, for example, petitioned the North Tasmanian Cricket Association not to stage its 1946 match between Williamstown and Coburg, fearing popularity could be gained by the rival code.
Even though the Association code did not grow further, the VFA continued to enjoy local success. The VFA continued to draw the best crowds in its existence during the first few years after the war. A record home-and-away crowd of 21,000 was drawn to a June 1945 match between ladder-leaders Coburg and Williamstown. The average crowd in 1947 was 4,200, almost double the crowds from ten years earlier. Not all of this increase was attributed to the throw-pass rules: part is attributed to petrol rationing, which began during the war and continued until 1950, as it reduced the mobility of Melburnians, making it more difficult for suburban dwellers to attend VFL games or pursue other Saturday afternoon leisure activities. Organisationally, by the end of the 1940s the Association employed a full-time secretary and managed a players provident fund, none of which existed prior to the throw-pass era.
By 1949, sportswriters commented that positional play had reduced and more players were now following the ball, resulting in crowded play and less speedy open play, which was countering the original intent of the throw pass. VFA crowds were beginning to wane, having dropped from 4,200 in 1947 to 3,380 in 1949, and the VFA's rules were gaining no further penetration into minor markets, nor support from the ANFC leagues. Some VFA club delegates felt that the throw-pass had outlived its novelty, and was no longer serving as an effective drawcard for the VFA.
The 1949 Grand Final on Saturday 1 October was the final senior VFA game played under throw-pass rules: Williamstown 10.5 defeated Oakleigh 8.14 at the St Kilda Cricket Ground before a crowd of 40,000.

Football control

Control structure during the schism

Having created a new code of football which was being adopted by other bodies, the VFA took on the role as the governing body and administrator for the throw-pass code. Leagues which adopted the rules split from their traditional governing bodies and entered affiliations with the VFA, paying an affiliation fee for the privilege. The NWFA, for example, ended its affiliation with the North Western Football Union in 1938 to enter an affiliation with the VFA; and competitions in country Victoria were forced to leave their governing body, the Victorian Country Football League, to affiliate directly with the VFA. In September 1946, the VFA was registered as an incorporated company, and it obtained a copyright of its code of rules.
Despite the schism between the VFL and VFA, the two bodies still had a working relationship and collaborated on areas of mutual interest. For example, since 1934 the VFL and VFA had jointly sponsored and managed the Victorian Football Union, which was the administrative body for junior and suburban football leagues within metropolitan Melbourne, including managing permit and clearance arrangements; and the two bodies continued that arrangement despite the schism.
With the VFA and VFL refusing to recognise each other's permits, playing under different codes of rules, actively promoting their own codes, and operating under different player payment structures, Australian rules football was enduring a schism analogous to the divide which existed for a century, and from an on-field perspective still exists, between the league and union codes of Rugby football.

Desire for united control

Even before the 1938 season began, the VFL, VFA and ANFC all recognised that operating under divided control and under substantially different codes of rules was not in the interests of Australian rules football as a whole. The lack of a united front made it difficult to effectively promote the game in New South Wales and Queensland – where rugby was more popular – or to defend Victoria from other football codes, particularly as the trafficking of players from one body by the other was undermining public opinion. It was also recognised that unifying control by allowing the VFL to use its size and influence to push the VFA out of the market altogether was not in the interests of football, as the VFA served the functions of promoting football in Melbourne's outer suburbs, and in occupying those suburbs' best quality grounds to keep other sports from using them. Even though it would almost certainly force it to give up the throw-pass which had driven its new popularity, the VFA was willing to negotiate towards a solution for unified control.
The VFA and VFL began reunification discussions at the start of 1938, and negotiations were ongoing throughout the schism – including during the World War II years when the VFA executive committee remained active in negotiation despite the competition being in recess onfield.

Proposals for united control

Early negotiations, and in particular the negotiations which took place from 1944 until 1945, focussed on a scheme under which the VFL and VFA would amalgamate into a single competition. The VFA stated on several occasions that it was prepared to "sink its identity" into the VFL if its clubs were given the opportunity to contest the Victorian senior premiership. However, the two bodies never agreed to terms, with a number of sticking points preventing a compromise:
Although at times the VFL and VFA executive committees made progress on negotiations, both bodies required constitutional changes to be ratified by a vote of their club delegates; even if the committees had agreed to an amalgamation, there is no guarantee that the clubs would have voted in favour.
As an alternative to amalgamation, it was thought that a new single control council could be established to manage football in Victoria, which would answerable to the ANFC and which would comprise delegates from the VFL and VFA as well as schools and junior competitions. Another proposal, investigated in 1940, saw a VFL zoning sub-committee investigate a scheme to admit four to six of the VFA's twelve clubs; this scheme was reminiscent of the VFL's 1925 expansion, which would have seen the VFL admit the VFA's strongest clubs, leaving only the VFA's weaker clubs playing under the throw-pass code, which would have halted the new code's growth and possibly killed off the VFA altogether. Nothing came of either scheme.

Control in Tasmania

Although the Association's rules were played only by very small leagues in Tasmania after the war, they were still important in off-field control discussions during the late 1940s. Tasmania was represented on the ANFC by Hobart's Tasmanian Australian National Football League; but Launceston's Northern Tasmanian Football Association and the coastal North Western Football Union, which were leagues of similar standard, were dissatisfied with football being controlled from Hobart, and they sought to establish a statewide council to provide them with equal representation in control of football in Tasmania. The fact that the NTFA and NWFU had a feasible option of switching their affiliation to the VFA, underpinned by the fact that the throw-pass code had enjoyed pre-war success in the NWFA, was used by the two greater northern leagues leverage when negotiating with the TANFL for united control in the late 1940s. The northern leagues were ultimately unsuccessful in establishing a council, and did not follow through with their threat; the TANFL continued to serve as Tasmania's sole voice on the ANFC, although its relationship with the NTFA and NWFU improved in the early 1950s.

Resolution

Efforts to reunite control stagnated for a few years after 1945, but they were reinvigorated in 1948 by the ANFC. The ANFC had a revived enthusiasm for spreading Australian rules football to other parts of Australia and the world, as it saw a strong opportunity at that time to promote the game in the United States of America. The ANFC and many of its delegates considered it very important that the VFL–VFA schism be ended and the control of football be unified to achieve these aims. ANFC president Walter Stooke called in 1948 upon the old adage that "a house divided against itself is easiest upset" when describing the importance of reunification.
One of the overarching aims of the VFA throughout its negotiation was that it wanted to be represented in the control and administration of the game, and it had rejected solutions under which the VFL retained unilateral control in Victoria. Under the new proposals put forward in 1948, the ANFC offered to grant the VFA a position on the ANFC executive. This new solution would force the VFA to adopt the national rules and permit reciprocity agreements, but would give the VFA the powers of control it desired, and allow it to remain independent from the VFL.
The proposal was first put forward to the VFA in late 1948, and although it was initially rejected – largely because the VFA wanted a full voting position on the council, which was not offered – it began to herald the end of the schism. In March 1949, the VFA and VFL signed a new clearance reciprocity agreement, ending eleven seasons of player trafficking; and by the end of the season, both the VFA and VFL had agreed to lift any active suspensions which players had received for switching codes without a clearance. The ANFC and VFA continued to negotiate an affiliation agreement through the season, which included the ANFC offering the VFA a period of temporary trial affiliation to encourage it to join. Finally, on 8 August, the VFA agreed to affiliate with the ANFC, with the motion succeeding by a vote of 18–7 at the VFA Board of Management. Under the terms of the affiliation:
The VFA began its affiliation and began playing under ANFC rules from the 1950 season, bringing an end to the schism. It began paying levies and contributing to ANFC funds from 1951. It still wanted a full voting position on the ANFC, but it could not initially be granted due to a stipulation in the ANFC constitution that no state could have more than one vote; it began agitating for the necessary change to the constitution, and was finally granted the vote in July 1953. This gave the VFA a formal say in the control and administration of Australian football at the national level, and made Victoria the only state represented by two delegates on the council.

Aftermath

After taking on the national rules, support of the VFA declined steadily throughout the 1950s. Although the VFA had always been of a lower standard than the VFL, the throw-pass had given it a notable point of distinction which it could use to attract fans in spite of that; without that, the VFA was firmly viewed as Victoria's second-rate competition. At the same time, the end of petrol rationing in 1950 and increased affordability of motor cars during the 1950s freed up suburban dwellers for other activities, or to attend VFL matches, on Saturday afternoons, and the introduction of television to Australia in the late 1950s affected attendances at the social nights which were vital for VFA clubs' finances at the time. Within only a few years, weak clubs such as Northcote, Camberwell and Brighton struggled to the point of being unable to pay their players; even a club like Williamstown, which had strong community links and won five premierships in six years between 1954 and 1959, saw its adult membership drop from 1562 to only 416 between 1950 and 1960. It was not until the 1960s, when the VFA expanded into the growing outer suburbs and began playing games on Sundays that it began to re-establish itself as a competitive part of Melbourne's football culture.
In 1951, as crowds dropped, the VFA tried to reintroduce the throw-pass rule. It put a motion to the ANFC to either change the national rules to allow throwing the ball, or to allow it as a "domestic rule", i.e. a rule which was permitted within the national rules, but on which individual leagues had discretion. The motion was rejected by a 7–1 majority, with only Tasmania supporting it and the VFA not yet having the right to vote. Some VFA clubs wanted to break away from the ANFC to allow the throw-pass to be reintroduced, but this never gained majority support.
The VFA remained affiliated with the ANFC until March 1970. Its relationship with the ANFC began to strain in 1965, when the VFA stopped recognising its 1949 permit reciprocity agreement with the VFL. Clearance disputes, particularly related to transfer fees, between the VFA and VFL persisted over the next five years, before finally the VFA was expelled in 1970 for refusing to submit to an ANFC ultimatum to establish and recognise a new permit agreement. It did not re-introduce the throw-pass after its expulsion from the ANFC.