National Premier Leagues Victoria

The Victorian Premier League is an Australian football competition. The League is the top division in Victoria.

Background

The Victorian Premier League was established in 1909 as the league competition of Anglo-Australian Football Association. Since football next Australian Rules Football, Rugby and Cricket eked out a marginal sport existence, the participating teams were recruited mainly from Central European immigrants. Even today refer several clubs in their official name, but also her nickname on the affiliation of their members from a country of origin.

The Victorian Premier League for a long time included a maximum of eight members, before the number of teams was increased in the first Regional League in the 1960s to twelve teams. Once there had been a long time discussions about australia wide league, which were fueled by the skills of the Australian national team for the 1974 World Cup, was created in 1977 with the National Soccer League, a first national championship in Australia. Here, the top four teams in the Victorian Premier League for the newly created division qualified. Although there were initially no sporty promoted and relegated between the regional championship and the National Soccer League, but the teams between the NSL and the regional leagues were postponed due to financial problems of individual club. With the loss of strong teams was accompanied by a loss of quality, which was only collected in 1987 sporting and losers were introduced. After the collapse of the NSL 2004, the two Victoria representative South Melbourne FC and Melbourne Knights came back in the VPL.