We have made well-ordered, stoichiometric films of VN using reactive sputtering and studied the effects of disordering due to deviations from stoichiometry and radiation damage. An unexpected local minimum of T/sub c/ for the well-ordered, stoichiometric VN was found. The principal result was that the peak in T/sub c/ for substoichiometric VN/sub 0.96/ can be shown to be consistent with a competition between spin fluctuations and electron--phonon coupling, but we find the effect of the former is smaller than previously predicted. The superconducting properties measured in radiation-damaged VN have been extrapolated to pure, stoichiometric VN.