Victorian Premier League
The Victorian Premier League is an Australian football competition . The league is the top division in Victoria .
background
The Victorian Premier League was created in 1909 as a league competition of the Anglo-Australian Football Association . Since football was a marginal sport alongside Australian football , rugby and cricket , the participating teams were mainly recruited from Central European immigrants. Even today, a number of clubs refer to the affiliation of their members from a country of origin in their official names but also their nicknames.
The Victorian Premier League consisted of a maximum of eight members for a long time, before the number of teams in the first regional league was increased to twelve teams in the 1960s. After there had been discussions about an Australian-wide league for a long time, which were fueled by the qualification of the Australian national team for the 1974 World Cup , the first national championship was established in 1977 with the National Soccer League . The best four teams in the Victorian Premier League qualified for the newly created league. Although there were initially no athletic promotions and relegations between the regional championship and the National Soccer League, due to financial problems of individual clubs, the teams were moved between the NSL and the regional leagues. The loss of the strong teams was accompanied by a loss of quality, which was only compensated when athletic promoted and relegated teams were introduced in 1987. After the collapse of the NSL in 2004, the two Victoria representatives South Melbourne FC and Melbourne Knights returned to the VPL.