Saturday 27 July - Melbourne Ground
Crowd: 3000

Melbourne 0
Essendon 1 (half time 0-1)

Essendon win by 1 goal

The home side had recently been installed as premiership favourites courtesy of their second win of the year against Carlton and were far superior on paper, but with some of the first 20 not showing up and leaving their place to emergencies it opened the door for the Essendonians to spring an upset.

With F. Baker as captain, Melbourne were soon surprised by the vigour of the opposition and rough play became a feature of the match. After 20 minutes of having the advantage the visitors finally broke through courtesy of a place kick goal. This scared Melbourne into a period of dominance, but they could not force the ball beyond the Essendon goalkeeper and behind the line - going into the half a goal down.

The start of the second half again saw the home team vigorously attacked again, but Essendon soon regained superiority and spent most of the remained of the game attacking Melbourne's goal looking for a second score. Neither side managed another major.

Best were Longden, Houston and F. Baker. Charles Forrester was umpire.

Selected team
C. Baker, F. Baker, Booth, Boys, JV Cook, E. Cooke, Cooper, Crohan, Houston, Jenkins, Lamrock, Longden, MacDonald, McKie, Nicholas, Sandilands, Simson, Pennent, Waldron, Wills. Emergencies - Donaldson, Batterbury

Media
Age - 27/07/1878
Weekly Times - 27/07/1878
Argus - 29/07/1878
Australasian - 03/08/1878