Origins of Australian rules football

Statue next to the Melbourne Cricket Ground on the approximate site of the 1858 "foot-ball" match between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College. Tom Wills is depicted umpiring behind two young players contesting the ball. The plaque reads that Wills "did more than any other person – as a footballer and umpire, co-writer of the rules and promoter of the game – to develop Australian football during its first decade."[1]

The origins of Australian rules football date back to the late 1850s in Melbourne, the capital city of Victoria.

There is documentary evidence of "foot-ball" being played in Australia as early as the 1820s. These games were poorly documented but appear to have been informal, one-off affairs. In 1858, cricketers, sports' enthusiasts and school students began to regularly play variants of English public school football in the parklands of Melbourne.[2][3] The following year, four members of the newly formed Melbourne Football Club codified the laws from which Australian rules football evolved.

Professional historians began taking a serious interest in the origins of Australian rules football in the late 1970s, and the first academic study of the sport's origins was published in 1982. Since then, research has challenged various origin myths, including the view that Australian rules football is derived from the Irish sport of Gaelic football. Since the 1980s, it has also been claimed that indigenous football games, collectively known as Marngrook, may have influenced early Australian rules football. This claim is largely based on circumstantial evidence that Tom Wills, one of the game's pioneers, gained exposure to Marngrook while growing up amongst Aboriginal people in the Victorian bush. The proposed Marngrook link is still hotly debated amongst historians.

  1. ^ First Australian Rules Game, Monument Australia. Retrieved 18 June 2013.
  2. ^ Pennings 2012, p. 8–10.
  3. ^ Hibbins & Ruddell 2009, p. 9.