Tom Wills of Rugby

Sean Fagan of RL1908.com

Tom Wills, Australian football’s founding father, always reckoned it was worth having a closer look at the English game of rugby. In fact, if Wills had initially got his way, there might never have been an Australian football code at all.

Tom Wills Founder of Australian football had attended Rugby School.

As John Harms explored in The Age, Australian football turned 150 years old on May 17 of 2009, marking the anniversary of the initial rules meeting of the fledgling Melbourne FC, in which Wills took a major role.

While Wills was Australian born, he spent all of his teen years as a boarder at England’s Rugby School.

His father had hopes that young Tom’s time at Rugby would lead to his emergence as an educated and refined gentleman. Wills though quickly found that he much preferred Rugby’s cricket and football, games at which he excelled.

William Hammersley, a fellow member at the Melbourne FC rules meeting, recalled how the debate to the set the laws down began: “Tom Wills suggested the Rugby rules, but nobody understood them except them himself.”

Wills recognised there was no point in being obstinate. He was reasoned enough to realise that some adjustment was needed if English school football was to be transformed into a leisure game for men played on the harder grounds of Melbourne.

The group went on to reach a comfortable compromise, formulating and putting down in writing the first rules of Australian football, but as Greg de Moore, author of a recent biography on Wills [link] explains, rugby was at the forefront: “Australian Rules football owes its defining features – emphasis on handling the ball, the importance of kicking, the shape of the ball, receiving a free kick after marking the ball and much more – to the Rugby School rules that Tom Wills brought.”

Wills unsuccessfully argued for further rugby traits, including the addition of a cross-bar between the goal posts (to eliminate fluke goals and “grubbers”), and even dared to suggest that each team should appoint a designated kicker to take place-kick shots at goal.

Rugby’s complex off-side laws were also cast aside, as were the code’s darker attributes of scrummaging, hacking (the kicking of shins), wrestling and tackling – all features that led to hard falls, serious injuries and the frequent loss of temper. Men could ill afford to present themselves for work on Monday morning still suffering sore bones and deep bruises from Saturday afternoon’s football.

So, the codes went their separate ways, as indeed did Australia’s cities in their football preferences. In Sydney and Brisbane “the Melbourne game” gained enthusiastic adherents from the 1880s onwards, but not the ascendancy.

More than they cared to admit it though, both codes still had much in common, particularly in regard to kicking the egg-shaped ball. The rugby traits of place and drop kicking for goal were by far the most regular form of scoring in Australian football well into the 20th century. The “treacherous punt” kick was derided by generations of Melbourne old-timers as the resort of the novice footballer.

No doubt if Albert “the Great” Thurgood (Essendon and Fremantle) could be resurrected he would find much in modern AFL to marvel at, but if he wanted to re-live his favoured “places” and “drops” he would have to venture out to watch the Storm or Origin.

Melbourne and the rugby codes are far from unacquainted with each other, with the first clubs founded as long ago as 1888.

In 1924 the playing strength of the local rugby league competition, which included Melbourne University, was capable enough to warrant the forming of a Victorian team. Victoria played against England at Fitzroy's Brunswick Street Oval, and then toured Queensland, taking on the Maroons in Brisbane. In 1914 the NSW Blues played England at the MCG. The 12,900 crowd reveled at the sight of a game described as “more fight than football.”

Despite awareness of rugby league over the past century, the task of convincing Victorians deeply soaked to the bone in the merits of their own game, that another football code was possibly worth watching was always a hard sell.

Aside from parochialism, many find it hard to look beyond rugby league’s brutish appearance and its apparently heavy-handed tackling techniques.

League supporters meanwhile will point to the artistry in its ball-passing movements, running plays and skilful kicking game, and the wonder of the players’ relentless determination and courage.

However, amidst a growing sense within Australian football that the indigenous code seems to be “softening” itself in a misplaced pursuit of Australia’s mythical “soccer mums,” rugby league's gladiatorial appeal offers an alternative.

Even the pioneering Tom Wills would surely forgive Melburnians for enjoying an occasional rugby indulgence.