How footy really got started in Australia

The uniforms looked like Where’s Wally and the matches lasted for days — welcome to Aussie rules, circa 1850. So why did one of footy’s founding fathers almost start a rifle club instead? NEW PODCAST, LISTEN NOW

Geelong FC’s 1884 VFA premiership team. Tom Cahill is third from right in the back row. Picture: Supplied

Rules were few, one match could last three days, and the uniforms could have doubled as jailhouse costumes, but there was no lack of passion in the early days of Aussie rules.

And the man credited as the most significant founding father of football was a fascinating figure.

Tom Wills was a champion cricketer with a larrikin streak whose father was killed in the biggest massacre of white men by Aboriginals in history, yet went on to coach an indigenous cricket team.

And the debate continues to this day over whether Wills modelled Aussie rules on the Aboriginal game of marngrook, played by local kids where he grew up near the Grampians.

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In 1858, the well-known cricketer wrote a letter to newspaper Bell’s Life to suggest a new “foot-ball club” be formed to stop his teammates and opponents getting flabby and unfit over winter.

In the letter, he argued: “It would keep those who are inclined to become stout from having their joints encased in useless superabundant flesh.”

AFL historian Col Hutchinson says there were few rules for the first properly documented match, which Wills co-umpired, between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College in August 1858.

An artist depicts the Richmond Paddock “ruckus”, with Melbourne Grammar playing Scotch College.

But perhaps the strangest rule was how the winner would be determined — there was no time limit and the victors would be the first team to kick two goals.

“It actually lasted three Saturday afternoons,” Hutchinson says.

“Would you believe at the end of play on the third Saturday, it was one goal each.

“And neither school could resume play for the fourth Saturday because of prior commitments, so they reluctantly declared it a draw.”

A pioneer player from 1858 showing uniform of the day.

Sketch of a football match, Carlton v. Geelong in 1880. Credit: State Library of Victoria

Fortunately, commonsense prevailed and Wills co-wrote a set of rules soon after that would be largely familiar to footy fans today.

Hutchinson says Wills lived with his family from a young age on an isolated farming property at Moyston, near the Grampians.

“It’s certain that Tom’s only playmates of roughly the same age … would have been Aboriginal kids,” he says.

“We also know certainly that the Aboriginal game of marngrook was played in that area quite commonly, so Tom must have seen it being played, and maybe he even joined in, who knows.

“The ball was made of usually possum skin and fur, stuffed with either more animal skin or charcoal or feathers … around about the size of a grapefruit, generally speaking.

“The game would be initiated by one of the participants kicking the ball high up into the air straight up into the air and everyone would … compete to try to catch the ball.

“What is fascinating is in one of the dialects in that area, their word ‘mark’ means ‘catch’. We don’t know whether that’s why it’s called a mark, but it’s one possibility.”

Tom Wills initially started footy as a way to keep cricket players fit in the off season.

An early football match in Melbourne. Credit: State Library of Victoria

Wills was never happier than when he was on the football field, and he played for Melbourne, Richmond and Geelong.

In 1861, Tom Wills went to Queensland to work on a family-owned pastoral run that was occupied by an Aboriginal tribe.

Wills’ father, Horatio, was among several people killed by Aboriginals, and Tom was lucky to escape with his life.

“One would have thought there would have been some bitterness towards Aboriginal people as a result of that, but it was really the reverse,” Hutchinson says.

Wills coached an Aboriginal cricket team, who toured England in 1868.

The team with coach Tom Wills (back row) in 1867.

Footy historian Col Hutchinson. Picture: Glenn Ferguson

Intriguingly, a football club was not Wills’ only suggestion in his 1858 letter to the newspaper — his alternative idea was the creation of a rifle club.

“That one didn’t get off the ground, unfortunately,” Hutchinson says.

“It fired a blank, I suppose you’d say.

“It would be hard to imagine a big rifle shooting tournament on the last Saturday in September at the MCG!”

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