The 1887 Victorian Football Association season was the 11th season of the Australian rules football competition. The premiership was won by the Carlton Football Club. It was the second and last VFA premiership in the club's history. Association membership The metropolitan membership of the Association (including Geelong) remained unchanged from the fifteen clubs which contested the premiership in 1886. The three Ballarat-based clubs (Ballarat, Ballarat Imperial and South Ballarat) also remained senior clubs; however, unlike in previous years, they were included in the premiership lists by all of the major sportswriters. 1887 VFA premiership The premiership was won by the Carlton Football Club, which played eighteen matches for the season for fifteen wins, two draws and a loss. The runner-up was , which played twenty-one matches for sixteen wins, three draws and two losses. was ranked third. No official system for deciding the premiership existed, but it was conventional for the club which suffered the fewest defeats during the season to be named premier. Ballarat vs Geelong Imperial match On Saturday July 2, a weakened , which was missing eight of its best twenty due to unavailability, suffered one of its two losses for the season when Ballarat Imperial beat them 3.4 to 0.2 at the Eastern Oval in Ballarat. As the season progressed, questions were raised by the Geelong club and many spectators over whether or not this match should be counted towards the premiership. Reasons why Geelong supporters believed it should have been excluded were: The match had been arranged informally as part of a country trip after a planned tour of Adelaide was cancelled, and was not included in the Association fixture at the beginning of the season. That the club had not expected the match to be counted when it was played. There were procedural irregularities related to the appointment of the umpires. Since the premiership was still an unofficial title conferred largely by press consensus, there was nothing within laws of the Association to deal specifically with the matter of the premiership; and, therefore there was no formal avenue through which to protest its inclusion. The Sportsman newspaper published a lengthy opinion on the matter in late July, favouring the inclusion of the match in the premiership. It referred in particular to Association Rule 3 which stated: 3. The Football Season shall commence on the first Saturday in May, and terminate on the 30th September.