1969 VFA season  The 1969 Victorian Football Association season was the 88th season of the top division of the Australian rules football competition, and the ninth season of second division competition. The Division 1 premiership was won for the second consecutive year by the Preston Football Club, after it defeated Dandenong in the Grand Final on 21 September by 12 points; it was Preston's second Division 1 premiership. The Division 2 premiership was won by Williamstown, in its second season since being relegated from Division 1. There had been open conflict on clearances between the Association and the Victorian Football League since the Association introduced transfer fees on its players in April 1967. League clubs were forbidden from paying transfer fees by the League's player payment rules (the "Coulter Laws"), and so the League terminated the 1949 clearance reciprocity agreement with the Association, allowing Association players to transfer directly to the League without a clearance, and "vice versa", and it also had a ban on approving clearances to the Association in place during much of the dispute. Despite the opportunity to transfer without a clearance, only three players had made this move to the League between 1967 and 1969: Terry Alexander, and future Hall of Fame players Kevin Sheedy and Peter Bedford – in no case was the transfer fee paid. All were suspended from the Association for five years, and the severity of this suspension is thought to have deterred others – particularly those who were not guaranteed to win a regular senior place in the League – from risking the move. The only player whose transfer fee was officially paid was 1967 Liston Trophy winner Jim Sullivan, who in 1968 attracted a $1,000 transfer fee to move to Claremont in the West Australian National Football League, a league which did not have the same payment restrictions as the VFL. On the other hand, more than sixty players from the VFL, mostly reserves and fringe senior players, made the cross to the Association without a clearance in the same time. In November 1968, the Australian National Football Council intervened in an attempt to end the clearance dispute, by mandating that the two competitions were required to recognise the other's clearances; the ANFC had long-standing rules requiring reciprocal recognition of clearances between interstate competitions, but a loophole meant that these rules had not applied to two competitions within the same state. In April 1969, the disagreement played out in the controversial case of Geoff Bryant. The Association approved the clearance of Bryant from Box Hill to the VFL's North Melbourne, and had set a transfer fee of $2,000 for Bryant's clearance.