The 1888 Victorian Football Association season was the 12th season of the Australian rules football competition. The premiership was won by the South Melbourne Football Club. It was the third premiership in the club's history, and the first out of a sequence of three consecutive premierships won from 1888 to 1890. Association membership Prior to 1888, the Williamstown and South Williamstown clubs amalgamated, with the merged entity known as Williamstown. The South Williamstown club had been established in 1886 as the result of a dispute between the Williamstown Football Club and Williamstown Cricket Club over the use of the Williamstown Cricket Ground for football; this schism persisted for two seasons, with unsatisfactory outcomes, including poor onfield performances resulting from the fact that Williamstown, which was then a small fishing village, could not supply enough talented players to sustain two competitive senior teams. The football and cricket clubs came to agreeable terms over the 1887-88 summer, and formed a single entity which fielded one senior cricket team and one senior football team, both of which played at the cricket ground. The amalgamated club went on to finish third for the season. Additionally, the neighbouring clubs of Prahran and , which had both begun competing as senior clubs in 1886, amalgamated into one club; the merged entity retained the name and history of St Kilda, and adopted St Kilda's red, white and black guernsey with Prahran's blue trousers as its uniform. As a result of these two amalgamations, the size of the Association contracted from eighteen senior teams to sixteen in 1889. The borough of Hotham was renamed North Melbourne, and the Hotham Football Club was accordingly renamed the North Melbourne Football Club. 1888 VFA ladder For the first time, the senior clubs were formally ranked into a full premiership ladder of the type understood in the modern era. The teams were ranked under a new system designed by Theo Marshall: For all senior matches played against other Association clubs, four premiership points were awarded for a win and two for a draw. Teams did not play a uniform number of premiership matches during the season. Each team's premiership points were adjusted upwards proportionally to match that of the club which played the most matches during the season – e.g., in this season, South Melbourne played 19 matches and Port Melbourne played 22 matches, the most of any club; so, South Melbourne's