Albert Park Football Club (VFA)

Albert Park Football Club (historically styled as Albert-park) was a 19th-century Australian rules football club based in the Melbourne suburb of Albert Park. The club was one of main first-rate senior football clubs during the unaffiliated era of Victorian football.

The club was established as the South Melbourne Football Club in May 1867.^[1] It changed its name to Emerald-hill in April 1868,^[2] then to Albert-park in May 1869.^[3] It played its home games at the Emerald-hill Ground.^[4]

The club quickly became one of the main senior clubs competing at the time. The best performance in its history was in the 1870 season; it was undefeated, but it finished second for the premiership behind Melbourne, which was also undefeated.^[5] The club also claimed the South Yarra Presentation Challenge Cup during the 1870 season, although the claim was disputed by the other clubs: rules required that a club win four cup matches without loss to claim permanent ownership of the Cup, but the other clubs argued that Albert-park's walk-over victory against Railway should not have counted.^[6]

In 1876, the club entered an amalgamation with North Melbourne, but the amalgamation ended one year later when North Melbourne was re-established as an independent club under the name 'Hotham'.^[7] In 1877, Albert-park was an inaugural senior member of the Victorian Football Association.

In 1880, Albert-park amalgamated with the neighbouring South Melbourne, which had joined the VFA as a senior club in 1879, to create a new club which carried on South Melbourne's name, and retained Albert-park's red and white colours. The merged club went on to dominate metropolitan football during the 1880s, and exists today as the professional Sydney Swans club in the Australian Football League.^[8] A newer, unrelated club called the Albert Park Football Club competes today in the Victorian Amateur Football Association.

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