Austrian football plunged to its lowest in 1980-81 season – that is, on club level. At the end of 1981 Austrian clubs ranked 31st in Europe, only Iceland was behind them. For the 5-year table, used by UEFA to determine the number of participants in the next year UEFA Cup Austria was 20th. No wonder the season hardly left memories.
The winners of the 3rd Division leagues, climbing up were ASK Salzburg (West), Favoritner AC (East), and
Flavia Solva Wagna (Centre).
Going down to 3rd Division were the last three of the 16-strong Second Division: Bregenz/Dornbirn (14th), 1. Wiener Neustadter SC (15th), and SCA Sankt Veit (16th). Not much stirr up the table: most of the league was just kicking the ball. First Vienna FC finished 3rd with 37 points. Austria (Klagenfurt) was 2nd 6 points ahead. If First Vienna did not threat Austria, so Austria was not a candidate for promotion: Wacker (Innsbruck) dominated the league – they won 22 matches, tied 6, and lost only twice, thus leaving Austria 7 points behind and returning quickly to the top league.
The small First Division was divided into three distinct groups, a clear testimony of the troubles of Austrian football: even 10-team league was not competitive. Two outsiders were concerned only with survival – SV Austria (Salzburg) managed to finish 9th with 23 points. With 21 points SC Eisenstadt was last and relegated.
The next 4 clubs were much stronger than the outsiders, yet mush weaker then the top four. Wiener Sport-Club was 8th with 32 points.
Linzer ASK (Linz) – 7th, with 34 points.
VOEST (Linz) – 6th with 36 points. A club slowly sinking down they were.
Grazer AK (Graz) – 5th with 38 points.
And lastly the four strong teams, which may have been head and shoulders above the rest of Austria, but were not truly equal among themselves: the points were close, but the real battle was, as ever, between Rapid and Austria. Admira-Wacker (Vienna) finished 4th with 42 points.
Rapid (Vienna) had to be satisfied with bronze – 43 points gave them nothing more. Well, considering that their newest recruit was the 38-years old Czechoslovak Frantisek Vesely, third place was just right.
Sturm (Graz) took the silver medals and one may be sorry they lost the race for the title by a point. Sturm was more or less the only team leaving good impression, but let’s face it: more or less, Sturm established itself as the third strongest Austrian club by that time. Third! Even when really strong, they still were mostly candidates for silver or bronze, not gold.
Austria (Vienna) won its 15th title. The strongest team in the recent years, traditional favourites and so on, but it was not an easy victory – Austria clinched the title by a single point, finishing with 20 wins, 6 ties, and 10 losses. They scored the most goals by far – 77, with Rapid’s 69 second. But Sturm had much better defensive record – they lost 8 games, allowing 39 goals in the process. The champion’s defense allowed 46, which was 6 goals more than lowly Linzer ASK allowed.
