The History of Australian Rules Football

Tom Wills began to devise Australian rules in Melbourne in 1858. A letter by Wills was published in Bell's Life in Victoria & Sporting Chronicle on 10 July 1858, calling for a "foot-ball club" with a "code of laws" to keep cricketers fit during winter. An experimental match, played by Wills and others, at the Richmond Paddock (later known as Yarra Park next to the MCG) on 31 July, 1858, was probably the first game of Australian football. However, few details of the match have survived.

On 7 August 1858, two significant events in the development of the game occurred. The Melbourne Football Club was founded, one of the world's first football clubs in any code, and a famous match between Melbourne Grammar School and Scotch College began, umpired by Wills. A second day of play took place on 21 August and a third, and final, day on 4 September. The two schools have competed annually ever since. However, the rules used by the two teams in 1858 could not have had much in common with the eventual form of Australian football since Wills had not yet begun to write them.

The Melbourne Football Club rules of 1859 are the oldest surviving set of laws for Australian football. They were drawn up at the Parade Hotel, East Melbourne, on 17 May, by Wills, W. J. Hammersley, J. B. Thompson and Thomas Smith (some sources include H. C. A. Harrison). The 1859 rules did not include some elements that soon became important to the game, such as the requirement to bounce the ball while running, and Melbourne's game was not immediately adopted by neighbouring clubs. Before each match the rules had to be agreed by the two teams involved. By 1866, however, several other clubs had agreed to play by an updated version of Melbourne's rules.

Though it may never be known exactly what inspired Tom Wills' game, the influence of English public school and university football codes, while undetermined, was clearly substantial. Wills had been educated at Rugby School in England (where rugby football was first codified in 1845). Wills had also, like W. J. Hammersley and J. B. Thompson, been to the University of Cambridge. The Cambridge Rules, drawn up in 1848, included some elements which are important in Australian football, such as the mark.

It is also often said that Wills was partly inspired by the ball games of the local Aboriginal people in western Victoria. Marn Grook, a sport that used a ball made out of possum hide, featured jumping to catch the ball for the equivalent of a free kick. This appears to have resembled the high marking in Australian football. The original recorded size of the Aboriginal playing field varies with records, but most records state that the playing field was about 1.6 km (1 mile) long, with teams playing until there was one winner.^{[citation needed]}

While it is clear even to casual observers that Australian rules football is similar to Gaelic football, the exact relationship is unclear, as Gaelic football was not codified by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) until 1887. Long before either code existed, traditional Irish football games, known collectively as caid, were being played. Historian B. W. O'Dwyer points out that Australian football has always been differentiated from rugby football by having no limitation on ball or player movement (that is, no offside rule). The need to bounce or toe-kick the ball while running, and punching the ball rather than throwing it, are also elements of modern Gaelic football. O'Dwyer suggests that some of these elements may be attributed to the common influence of older Irish games.