The 1930 VFL season was the 34th season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest-level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs and ran from 3 May to 11 October, comprising an 18-match home-and-away season followed by a four-week finals series featuring the top four clubs.
Collingwood won the premiership, defeating Geelong by 30 points in the 1930 VFL grand final; it was Collingwood's fourth consecutive premiership, the only time in the league's history that a club has won four consecutive premierships, and ninth VFL premiership overall. Collingwood also won the minor premiership by finishing atop the home-and-away ladder with a 15–3 win–loss record. Collingwood's Harry Collier, Footscray's Allan Hopkins and Richmond's Stan Judkins tied for the Brownlow Medal as the league's best and fairest players, and Collingwood's Gordon Coventry won his fifth consecutive leading goalkicker medal as the league's leading goalkicker, becoming the first player to win the award five times consecutively.
In 1930, 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, Once he had been 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 5 to 11 (i.e., the last seven matches of the round). Once the 18 round home-and-away season had finished, the 1930 VFL Premiers were determined by the specific format and conventions of the amended "Argus system".
Rules for classification: 1. premiership points; 2. percentage; 3. points for
Average score: 80.5
Source: AFL Tables
All of the 1930 finals were played at the MCG so the home team in the semi-finals and preliminary final is purely the higher ranked team from the ladder but in the Grand Final the home team was the team that won the preliminary final.
When the VFL's Umpires Panel counted the Brownlow Medal votes that had been awarded during the 1930 season, it found that three players had been considered best on the ground on four occasions: Harry Collier of Collingwood, Allan Hopkins of Footscray, and Stan Judkins of Richmond. Upon reviewing the rules, there were two inconsistent provisions in the rules concerning Brownlow ties: one in which the umpires would meet to determine the winner, and another in which the player who earned his votes from the fewest game would break the tie;[2][3] there were also three informal votes which could not be counted, one of which is understood to have ambiguously been for 'Collier', not distinguishing between Harry and brother Albert.[4] The panel recommended that no Brownlow Medal be awarded for 1930; but the full league board of management instead decided used the 'fewest games' tiebreaker to award the medal Judkins, who had played 12 games compared with Hopkins' 15 and Collier's 18.[5]
In 1981, the league changed Brownlow Medal rules to allow more than one player to receive the medal if tied on votes; and, in 1989, it retrospectively awarded medals to Harry Collier and Allan Hopkins for 1930. All three are now considered joint winners.