Despite the rationalisation to its twelve strongest teams and improved television coverage, the financial position of the competition and the vast majority of its clubs remained perilous into the early 1990s, and it was clear that the VFA was no longer a viable independent body in the long term. At the end of the 1994 season, the VFA was formally disbanded in an administrative capacity, and the on-field competition was turned over to the Victorian State Football League – a body which had been set up two years earlier by the AFL to manage and oversee football at all levels in Victoria, and also ran the statewide under-18s competition (the present day NAB League) and the AFL reserves competition in Victoria. This ended the VFA's 97 years of independence from the VFL/AFL, and created for the first time since 1896 a unified structure for state-level football in Victoria.