Football was not played on ANZAC Day until 1960, on the condition there was no curtain raiser game (the reserves, now the VFL), nothing could happen until after 2:00pm.
Two games were played on ANZAC Day that year, neither featuring Collingwood or Essendon.
At Brunswick St Fitzroy beat Carlton by 7 points, and at the Junction Oval Melbourne beat St Kilda by 24 points. The MCG was not used.
The following year Essendon played its first ANZAC Day game at Windy Hill going down to Melbourne by 25 points. There was another game played at the Lake Oval (South Melbourne V Richmond). The MCG was Melbourne’s home ground, so only Melbourne home games were schedued there.
Essendon went on to play Richmond in 1964 (it was a Saturday so everyone played), Carlton in 1968, Melbourne in 1969, Hawthorn in 1970 (another Saturday), Carlton in 1973, Carlton again in 1975 (this was the first big ANZAC day game played in front of 77.000 at VFL Park. Another game at the MCG featuring Melb V St Kilda only pulled 35,00), Fitzroy in 1981, North Melbourne in 1983 (another full Saturday round), Richmond in 1984 (our first ANZAC Day at the G), Carlton in 1986 ( once again at VFL Park in front of 68,000), Carlton again at Waverley crowd 56,000).
!n 1989 we played St Kilda at Moorabbin, in 1989 we played Carlton at Princes Park (33,000 squeezed into a possible lockout, the crowd would have doubled if Carlton had agreed to switch the game to the vacant MCG). In 1994 St Kilda played home to Richmond at VFL Park in front of 37,000. VFL park was a neutral venue then, no team played ‘home’ there, also where was the ‘Tiger Army’?
By the following year 1995 Essendon and Collingwood had fully or partially moved home games to the MCG. On ANZAC Day 1995 (25 years ago this year) Collingwood were scheduled to play home to Essendon, when this happened. 94,825 people turned up, thousands more were locked out (it was not fully ticketed, the AFL didn’t foresee this). It was Kevin Sheedy who had the vision to suggest these teams meet every year. AS they say, the rest is history………………………………….!
