The 1965 Victorian Football Association season was the 84th season of the top division of the Australian rules football competition, and the fifth season of its second division. The Division 1 premiership was won by the Waverley Football Club, after it defeated Port Melbourne in the Grand Final on 26 September by twelve points; it was the first and only premiership ever won by Waverley in either division in its time in the Association, and it came in only its second season in Division 1. The Division 2 premiership was won by Preston; it was the club's second Division 2 premiership in three years, having competed in and been relegated from Division 1 in the intervening year.
Grounds
In the early 1960s, several Victorian Football League clubs were interested in leaving their traditional home grounds, and many were looking at Association grounds as possible new homes. The first successful move occurred in 1964, when League club brokered a deal with the Moorabbin Council to move its playing and training base to the Moorabbin Football Club's home ground, Moorabbin Oval; it had sought a new ground which it could manage free from the direction of a district cricket club and in a growing suburb whence it could attract new fans. The move was a success for St Kilda, but resulted in Moorabbin being suspended from the Association.
St Kilda's success motivated other League clubs to seek new grounds, and in 1965 there were two plays by League clubs for Association grounds: moved to Coburg Oval, a move which ultimately lasted less than one year, but nearly cost Coburg its place in the Association; and, attempted unsuccessfully to move to Skinner Reserve, Sunshine's newly developed ground.
North Melbourne's move to Coburg Oval
On 25 June 1964, three months after St Kilda's move to Moorabbin was first announced, it was revealed that the Coburg Council had approached the North Melbourne Football Club, and that they were discussing terms for the club to relocate its operations to Coburg Oval on a long-term lease. The ground was one of the best in the Association at the time, and the Coburg Council had ambitions of seeing League football played on it. North Melbourne was keen to leave the North Melbourne Cricket Ground in Arden Street, which had been its home since the 19th century, because low population density in the surrounding industrial area and isolation from public transport were stifling its ability to attract fans, and a relocation to Coburg offered advantages in both of these areas.
The loss of its ground would have meant expulsion from the Association, so from the time the move was first announced, the Coburg Football Club was staunchly opposed to the council's actions, and vowed to fight the move. Coburg examined a number of legal options, and appealed unsuccessfully to force a referendum of ratepayers. Coburg had many allies: the Association did not want to see another of its best grounds lost to the League; the Australian National Football Council did not want to see a newly vacant North Melbourne ground lost to another code; and the League's Carlton Football Club was opposed to the invasion of its territory – most of Coburg, including the ground itself, was in Carlton's recruiting zone (only West Coburg was in North Melbourne's territory), and 25% of Carlton's members lived in the area.
In November 1964, the council and club began working on terms for a 40-year lease, under which the council would spend £80,000 to bring the venue to League standards, and North Melbourne would serve as ground manager, pay £4,000 per year in rent, and £50,000 for upgrades over thirty years. The council sought to formalise the deal through a controversial request for tender which effectively precluded anybody but North Melbourne from applying by stipulating that applicants "must play Australian rules football within the framework of the Victorian Football League"; it dropped the requirement that applicants play in the League after it was criticised as unethical, but the point was moot as Coburg Football Club's rent offer of £200 per year had no chance of competing with North Melbourne's £4,000 per year. The council gave its formal approval for a lease by a narrow 6–5 majority on 11 January 1965, and North Melbourne took occupancy on a week-to-week basis from 1 February, while the lease was finalized. Over the following months, the terms of the lease were renegotiated, and when the lease was formally signed on 2 April 1965, it was for a term of only seven years, much shorter than the forty-year terms which had initially been discussed.