TASMANIAN INTRASTATE CHAMPIONSHIP

THE COMMONWEALTH JUBILEE CUP

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Peter Hudson (TFL) marks strongly from behind against the NTFA in 1978.  (Click to enlarge.)

  Match Results and Ladders

  Winning Teams

  Best and Fairest Player Awards:

          NTFA Awards

          NWFU Awards

          TANFL Awards     

Regional rivalry is probably more intense in Tasmania than in any other Australian state.  The first North versus South match took place as early as 1883, before the North even had its own Controlling Body.  Matches between the two regions continued almost annually until 1950, with the northern team comprising players from the Launceston-based Northern Tasmanian Football Association, and the southerners hailing from the Hobart-based Southern Tasmanian Football Association (later renamed the Tasmanian Football League, and later still the Tasmanian Australian National Football League).  Meanwhile, football was rapidly gaining in strength in the north-west of Tasmania.  As early as 1907, a North-West combination defeated the NTFA both home and away, and the establishment in 1910 of the North-West Football Union effectively gave Tasmania three top level competitions of broadly equivalent strength.  Intrastate clashes involving the NTFA, NWFU and TFL rapidly became eagerly anticipated highlights of each football season, as the size of the crowds which typically attended them proved.  In 1921, for example, an NTFA record attendance of 9,000 turned up at York Park to see the home side lose a nail-biting affair against the TFL by 5 points.  The following year, in Hobart, a state record crowd of 11,000 witnessed the TFL's 10.19 (79) to 7.10 (52) defeat of the NTFA, but two years later a new high of 12,000 was registered at Burnie as the NWFU saw off the challenge of the southern city slickers to the tune of 16 points.

Despite the continuing popularity of these matches through the 1930s and 1940s, it was not until 1951, and the introduction of the Commonwealth Jubilee Cup, that the participating teams could be said to be competing for anything other than pride.  Formalising the competition only served to heighten and intensify the rivalry, and during the 1950s and '60s in particular the intrastate championship series regularly gave rise to some of the season's most stirring and emotion-charged encounters.  Moreover, the matches provided the Tasmanian interstate selectors with an ideal barometer of players' ability to perform at a level of football approximating to state standard.  It may be entirely coincidental, and even if not there were undoubtedly other factors at work, but it is worth noting that Tasmania's post-war heyday as a football power coincided almost exactly with the peak years of its intrastate championship series (see footnote 1).  When the series was finally abandoned in the mid-1980s an extremely significant, indeed unique, feature of the Tasmanian football landscape was demolished, and the sport of Australian football was all the poorer for it.

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Match Results and Ladders:  [ 1951 to 1960.pdf ] [ 1961 to 1970.pdf ] [ 1971 to 1984.pdf ]  Results of all intrastate matches played prior to 1951 can be found in the Extracurricular Matches section.

Championship Winners:

Summary Of Wins:  15 TANFL; 10 NWFU; 2 NTFA

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Best and Fairest Player Awards:

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Footnotes

1. If performances in interstate matches are taken as a convenient yardstick of a state's standing in the game it is clear that Tasmania's was at an all time high between the mid-1950s and early 1970s, a period in which the intrastate series provided an undoubted highlight of each football season.  During this decade and a half the Tasmanian state team enjoyed many noteworthy successes, including a first ever win over the VFL, three defeats of Western Australia, including one in Perth, and two carnival victories against South Australia.  Return to Main Text