Australian Football Association of North America

1. • What is Australian Rules Football?
   • Where is Aussie Rules played?
   • How did it all start? (a short history)
   • Show me some Net sources for Aussie Rules Football.
   • History of the FAQ
 

What is Australian Rules Football?

Australian Rules Football (also "Aussie Rules" or "footy") is one of the many existing forms of football, with roots traceable from early forms of Rugby and Gaelic football, but it is uniquely Australian. Its rules were first codified in 1858, and probably predate all other modern forms of football, such as American, Canadian, Rugby Union and League, Association (Soccer) and Gaelic football. Today it is a multi-million dollar business, with a National Competition and numerous smaller leagues. Interest in the game is generally at an all time high within and outside Australia.

Where is Aussie Rules played?

Australia is divided into 6 states and 2 territories. Aussie Rules is the most popular form of football in Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, and the Northern Territory and has a strong following in the Australian Capital Territory (A.C.T.). Although played in the States of Queensland and New South Wales, it runs second string to Rugby League in terms of popularity in those states.

The AFL provides financial or practical assistance to leagues in Britain, Canada, Denmark, Japan, New Zealand, and here in the USA.

How did it all start?

Englishmen were first settled in Australia by force in 1788, when the First Fleet of "transported" English convicts arrived at what is now known as Sydney Harbour, sentenced to be exiled to the far end of the earth for life. They and those who followed, forced or not, doubtless brought their own hometown versions of football with them.

Since Roman times, games involving kicking around small objects, usually leftover livestock bladders, had been played all over Europe, probably spread by the Romans themselves. In the British Isles, these evolved into the village mellays of the Middle Ages (any resemblance to the French and English word melee is totally intentional), annual brutal contests at something that usually vaguely resembled modern soccer, but with entire towns as opposing sides and the field sometimes occupying the miles between their town greens. First goal usually won, and the injuries themselves would probably have limited them to an annual event.

... a Frenchman watching a game at Derby exclaimed that if Englishmen called this playing it would be impossible to say what they would call fighting.
--- Laurence Montague, late of the Guardian of Manchester, in Encyclopaedia Britannica

By the early 19th century, increased leisure time due to the Industrial Revolution led to more regular and less violent sport, and thus began demand for standard rules for football. However, these rules took most of the century to work out, especially since students at various "public" schools (private boarding schools for gentry-in-training) such as Rugby and Eton developed games of their own to play on campus. No one seems to have thought of picking up the football until William Webb Ellis ignored the rules at Rugby in 1823, but it caught on fairly quickly.

The discoveries of gold in California in 1849 were followed by strikes in central Victoria in 1851. British and Irish prospectors rushed in to join the locals, all the "diggers" bringing their own variations on the theme of football into the gold fields. Australian football probably began as the compromise pickup games played by the diggers, incorporating features of Rugby, soccer and Irish games. But it took the likes of Thomas Wentworth Wills to say finally, "We shall have a game of our own."

Wills' father Horatio was the first European to settle in Ararat in western Victoria, where the hills reminded him of the story of Noah landing the Ark as the Deluge receded. He was also the only settler who refused to evict the local Djabwurrung people from his land, and young Tom absorbed their culture alongside that of his fellow immigrants. One of the things they taught him was a game they called marn grook, a sort of keep-away game played with a stuffed or inflated opossum skin which featured the leaping overhead catch used today in taking high marks.

Horatio wanted his son to have the best education available, so he sent Tom away to boarding schools when the time came, first in Melbourne, then to Rugby School in England, where he proved himself as a scholar and athlete, captaining the cricket and football teams. He returned in 1856 with an outstanding sporting background on two continents, taught his state cricket side everything he learned in England, and the next summer led them to their first ever win over New South Wales.

Wills was convinced that the cricketers would improve further if they had something to do during the winter months, and he eventually convinced the cricketers that "a game of our own" was just the thing to maintain their fitness. The Melbourne Football Club was founded August 7, 1858, as an adjunct of the Melbourne Cricket Club; it was the first football club in Australia, and one of the first anywhere. The first game was played that very day, as two private schools, Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College, spent the day on the Richmond Paddock (just outside the present Melbourne Cricket Ground and now part of the MCG car park). Each team scored a goal that first day; the game was resumed every other Saturday for the next four weekends until it was called a draw on September 4th, after no further goals were scored.

The new game spread fairly quickly, with help from the founders. Wills wrote a new set of rules for football the next year, along with associates H. C. A. "Coldy" Harrison (Wills' cousin and a fine athlete in his own right), W. J. Hammersley and J. B. Thompson. Harrison founded the club in his hometown of Geelong that same year, and others throughout Victoria (including Carlton) were well established by the time the American Civil War was over. Each had its own book of laws, similar only in generalities: irregular paddocks incorporating trees and other obstacles, and spectators, no behind posts, no running with the ball, no handpass, no high marks (blokes could get hurt landing on surfaces like this), and more than a vague resemblance to the ancient mellays. To facilitate competition between clubs, the fathers of the game and the clubs wrote a common set of rules in 1866, incorporating most of the features of the game we know today. Many of these, like the high mark, just happened to suit Harrison's athletic talents, which would have been well suited to basketball.

Several of the more successful clubs banded together into the Victorian Football Association (VFA) in 1877. Through the rest of the century, the game spread along the southern coasts of Australia, spawning state leagues in what are now South and Western Australia and began attracting unprecedented crowds in the tens of thousands. (No one thought of asking these people for money until Carlton began charging admission at the turn of the century.) In any event, the issue of professional players drove the next major development. On October 2, 1896, eight leading clubs (Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Fitzroy, Geelong, Melbourne, St. Kilda, South Melbourne) broke away to found the Victorian Football League (VFL), the predecessor of the current national league. (In 1997, the VFA assumed the VFL's identity.)

The history of the VFL and its successor, the AFL, continues in Section 3.

Show me some Net sources for Aussie Rules Football.

The AFANA pages (www.afana.com) contain links to a wide variety of footy sites, including our Network Resources FAQ. By popular demand, some of those links have been incorporated into this FAQ.

History of the FAQ

This is based on the FAQ for the rec.sport.football.australian newsgroup, which was first created in October 1994 by Adam East, a student at the University of Western Australia. Versions 0.1, 0.2 and 0.5 were posted to r.s.f.a over the next 2 months, and modifications were made according to feedback received. The FAQ was put onto the original Bouncedown FTP site at UWA in November 1994.

The first official version (v1.0) of the FAQ was finalized on 16 December 1994. Revisions were posted as follows:

V1.1 - 2 February 1995
V1.2 - 22 March 1995
V1.3 - 7 April 1995
V1.4 - May 1995
V1.5 - March 1997
V1.6 - April 2004
V1.7- Conversion to this Wiki, June 2006 (in progress).

AFANA procured Version 1.4 in March 1997. Initial modifications were made by the late Dana M. Spuhler, a charter member, in May 1997.  The new version 1.6 adds the history section to the FAQ, incorporates Web addresses for AFL clubs and many other football organizations, and includes wholesale changes related to season 1999.    This FAQ is dedicated to the memory of Dana Spuhler.