THE ENGLISH ORIGINS OF AUSTRALIAN FOOTBALL

Sean Fagan of RL1908.com

The boys made use of a blown bladder without the covering of leather, by way of foot-ball, putting peas and horse-beans inside, which occasioned a rattling noise as it was kicked about :— "And nowe in winter, when men kill the fat swine, They get the bladder and blow it great and thin, With many beans and peas are put within It rattleth, soundeth,and shineth cleare and fayre While it is thrown and cast up in the ayre, Each one conteudeth and hath a grete delight With foot and with hand the bladder for to smite; If it fall to ground they lift it up again, And this waye to labour they count it for no payne." The goal is usually made with two sticks, driven into the ground, about two or three feet apart. It is in this innocent form the game is now played at some of our public schools. From: The Circulator of Useful Knowledge, Amusement, Literature, Science and General Information (London 1825)

The Australian football fraternity need to put aside their "rugby-aversion", read some texts from the early/mid-1800s, and put some context to their code's birth and customs (such as Kick-to-Kick and Rugby School).

A must-read are the rules of football at Rugby School - first documented in 1845, the rugby game at that time featured legalised off-side play and unrestricted "knocking-on" ahead /forward ("fist-punting"* the ball) - two signature features of the first "Melbourne rules" (1859) and thus Australian football.

1845 Rugby School rules - pdf and 1859 Melbourne FC rules.

Striking the ball on the ground when running with it was introduced into Melbourne rules in 1866. It was done to slow down and hinder players endeavouring to make unrestricted "William Webb Ellis type" long rugby runs towards the opposition goal.

The most prominent fleet-footed ball-runner of the early 1860s was one of the game's founding fathers, Harry Harrison. Geoffrey Blainey in A Game of Our Own adding that the 1866 rule change: "...marked the end of Harrison's very long Rugby-like sprints with the ball. Thereafter he had to bounce it."

The need to strike the ball on the ground being seen as a sufficient means to slow down a runner enough to stop him getting away goal-wards with little fear of capture or need to dispose of the football to a team mate or downfield.

Striking or bouncing the ball on the ground was a principle found in the English hand-ball game, and later adopted by England's Football Association (soccer) to bring restrictions to the "carrying" of the ball by goal-keepers: "bouncing the ball by the hand on the ground is not carrying." This same principle from the English hand-ball game was adopted in Melbourne football in 1866 to obviate the claim of "carrying" the ball.

Bouncing the ball was also a rugby loophole or "trick" to prevent a player holding the football from being tackled - by bouncing the football while running, he could claim not to be holding the ball at all, and could not therefore be lawfully tackled or held by an opponent.

After the Melbourne FC banned unrestricted carrying/running with the ball in 1860, bouncing the ball would have lawfully negated the rule; though as Blainey describes above, Harrison and others ran without even excercising the loophole of bouncing the ball. (Sydney rugby players were still bouncing the ball in open play as recently as the winter of 1895.**)

Other "unique" or "innovative" features of Australian football are also to be found in English games (i.e. as they were being played in the 1850s and earlier).

Many Australian rules texts or articles on the subject of the game's birth and evolution point to its "unique feature of lacking the offside rule of rugby".

Yet - that isn't true - and wouldn't be true in rugby until the 1862 rules of Rugby School.

The concept of off-side players in rugby being "out of the game", and outlawing the deliberate knocking-on, were not introduced into the rugby game until after the first rules of the Melbourne FC were devised.

The first written rules of Rugby School (1845) did not prohibit off-side players - they did however restrict what off-side players could do - the fact these rules exist is evidence in itself that players were permitted to be continually "off-side" during rugby games in the 1850s.

The stock objection of many inside and outside of Rugby School was "the number and the length of the laws of the game." For the sake of providing a set of rules that all intending players could quickly grasp, and achieve the club's objective of excercise, the Melbourne FC's founders in 1859 opted for a simplified set of football rules, most notably choosing not to include the additional impositions of Rugby School which guided off-side play.

However, rather than being innovaters, modifying or simplifying the rules of Rugby School was in itself a tradition of the School, its football, and the non-School teams that sought to play the game.

Before School matches and rugby games played by others elsewhere, the opposing captains would meet and agree on what rules would apply for the day. When the first clubs were formed they too were free to play rugby in a form that they preferred.

Tom Wills pushed for football as played under Rugby School to be adopted in full by the Melbourne FC, but was out-voted as application of the written rules required an understanding of the unwritten rules and traditions.

The Rugby laws document at that time was not attempt to fully explain how the game was to be played, but merely to clarify disputed aspects of the game.

Did Wills though really fail to get what he wanted? While it is said that the Melbourne Club's first rules of 1859 are a new code of football, they are essentially a documented form of the principles common to the major Public Schools of England. All Wills didn't get adopted were the additional clarifying rules of Rugby that were the first attempts to guide and regulate how off-side players could conduct themselves.

Rather than attempting to devise a unique and innovative football code in a nationalistic-fervour, the founders of the Melbourne game were seeking to simplify football to the point where any Briton, no matter which School he attended, could play football free of argument in colonial Victoria - a place and time where we all thought of Britain as "Home" and ourselves as "colonial Britons".

The fact that no attempt was made by the Melburnians to devise a uniquely Australian form of cricket provides telling evidence.

The rules of cricket were known to all, no matter which Public School you attended. If eschewing "old England" was so paramount in Melbourne, cricket's rules would have been turned into an "Australian game" as well.

The alternative is that we will have to accept that this Australian-nationalism amongst Victorian sportsmen was solely an affliction of winter.

The birth of Australian rules football, some 40 years before Federation of the colonies, was about accommodating all Britons, not Australian-patriotism.

As a result of creating a simplified form of English football, we see a game that possesses all features across the spectrum of the game in England - of punt kicks, drops and places, dribbling the ball, fist-passes, knocking the ball, bouncing the ball, running and carrying the ball, no off-side and no cross-bar.

A number of Australian football texts cite a quote from Wills in the early 1860s as evidence that off-side play was outlawed at Rugby, and that Wills had by that time foresaken his allegiance to rugby football in favour of the Victorian game: "I think the ground should be free to all, so that the captain of each side could dispose of his forces in any position he likes."

Yet, this is exactly what a captain could do in rugby before 1866!

Wills wasn't speaking out against rugby, he was speaking out against the growing calls to change rugby from the game he played in England, turning into a game where the off-side player was "out of the game".

Rule 12 of Rugby (1845) permitted off-side players to take a fair catch (mark) - which entitled the player to either run or to make "a fair knock on" (defined as "striking the ball on with the arm or hand").

Off-side players could not kick the ball or run in a try, however, as with all players (off-side or not) they could knock the ball on or backwards with their fist (in the manner defined above - which clearly came to be a trait synonymous to Australian rules alone).

In football at Westminster School "the Rugby fashions" of running with the ball "and 'fist-punting' when you had the ball in hand" were strongly featured in the 1840s until "this running and 'fist-punting' was stopped in 1851 or 1852."*

Throwing (or hand passing in the modern rugby sense) the ball between team mates was not prohibited by Rugby laws, but it was against the spirit of the game. To hand-pass/throw the ball away was seen to be too easy, unmanly, and akin to cheating. The Melbourne FC chose to specify throwing as an illegal act in its first rules (1859).

The conventional rugby style hand-passing game that we are all familiar with came into the game in the 1880s, with the development of backlines (hence its absence from American football, which began with rugby rules in the mid-1870s).

Rule 8 of the Melbourne FC (1859) The Ball shall be taken in hand only when caught from the foot, or on the hop. In no case shall it be lifted from the ground is the same as Rule 8 of Rugby School (1845) Running in is allowed to any player on his side, provided he does not take the ball off the ground, or take it through touch i.e. lifting the ball from the ground in rugby was not permitted until the mid-1860s / players in both codes could run with the ball if they caught it on the full or on the bounce (but not if on the ground).

The only difference was that rugby permitted "running in" - what we call a "try". There was no Melbourne FC rule in 1859 which restricted running rugby-style with the ball (the need to bounce the ball when running was adopted in 1866). This was done to rein-in all the "William Webb Ellis style" runners and encourage kicking of the ball.

The other text that needs to be considered is Thomas Hughes' classic novel, Tom Brown's Schooldays.

Though the influence of Rugby football had already begun to permeate into other schools in England, it was the publication in 1857 of Tom Brown's Schooldays that ignited a world-wide phenomena in football.

Based on Hughes' own experiences of Rugby School, Tom Brown became the Harry Potter of his day.

Courtesy of a colourful and descriptive chapter recounting Brown's first football game on the School's field, the winter sport was suddenly thrust into popularity throughout the English speaking world.

A year later, was anyone really surprised to see that the boys of Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar are more than eager to take part in a "Grand Football Match" (played in the Rugby School tradition of 3 consecutive Saturdays***) under the eye of former Rugby School old-boy, Thomas Wills?

The first rules of Australian football are merely a simplified and documented version of the rules and principles of football operating at Rugby School and the other schools.

As Wills write in his now famous letter to Bell's Life, the object of forming a club for men to play football amongst each other was not to create competition, but physical excercise.

The Melbourne FC rules are a less systematic version of the rules in place at Rugby School - as many from the 19th century put it when comparing Victorian rules and rugby, "less scientific" - nevertheless, like all other football clubs and schools throughout the Empire and North America, the Melbourne FC founders are still merely drawing their rules from football as played by England's public schools, with Rugby School (thanks to Tom Brown) the most influential.

Looking at the rules alone does not reveal the full history. For example, the 1859 (and subsequent) laws of Victorian rules football do not say the ball may be punched or knocked, yet the Rugby School "fist-punt" was/is a feature of the Australian game.

Nor do the Victorian rules of the 1800s instruct how goals may or not be kicked - yet rugby style place-kicks and drop-kicks were the most prevalent forms of goal scoring until well into the 20th century. The "treacherous punt" did not take complete hold of the Australian game until the 1970s.

The myth of a game "invented by Australians for Australians" has embedded itself so deeply in the psyche of the sport, that no one has ever considered comparing the original rules of both Australian football and rugby, other available texts, and even the possible influences of older English folk football.

That an English school footballer of the years immediately before the formation of Australian football in 1858, should explicity mention in his description of the game specific actions that were unlawful on the playing field, says in itself that fresh students must have initially been keenly making use of football traits they had acquired from elsewhere at that time - either in other English schools, or more likely, in traditional town and village football.

One could argue that far from being born as an innovation in Melbourne in 1858, Australian football and its signature traits stretch back even beyond Rugby School football, into the traditional English folk football of far earlier times.

* Refer to Recollections of a Town Boy at Westminster (1849-1855) by Captain F. Markham (1903).

** Refer to Macleay Chronicle newspaper, 11 July 1895.

*** Refer to The Book of Rugby School: Its History and Its Daily Life by Edward Meyrick Goulburn (1856), and Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes (1857).

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