The Victorian Football League was a name change for the Victorian Football Association for no real reason other than to take advantage of the vacancy of the name created by the change to the Australian Football League for the previous incarnation of the VFL. This coincided with the admission to the competition of two non Melbourne teams for the first time since Geelong West left the VFA. North Ballarat and Traralgon. In subsequent years, Traralgon left the competition after just two seasons and in 1998 were replaced by a new team from Bendigo. In 2000, the VFL absorbed the reserve teams from the AFL (except for Sydney) with a few clubs joining forces for that season. Sandringham joined forces with Melbourne, Box Hill joined forces with Hawthorn and Werribee joined forces with the Western B