Australian Football

Football in Australia in the 1850s

By the 1850s football practice in the United Kingdom had diverged into three distinct forms. The village folk football still continued in a number of areas though attenuated and confined by the authorities.[1] In the public schools and the universities a number of variants of the game were played which had distinct and specific sets of rules.[2] Small-sided games of football sometimes for monetary or physical rewards were being played in various parts of England and Scotland.[3] The latter type of football can also be found in Australia in the mid-nineteenth century. Most of the examples uncovered so far were not the rough village games but something much closer to association football (soccer) as it was codified in England in 1863.

A notice in the Port Phillip Herald of 30 March 1850, under the heading of ‘Old English Easter Sports’ and advertising a ‘Grand Football Match for a Silver Watch’, is not untypical.[4] In late 1850 the Port Philip District of New South Wales marked its separation from its northern neighbour as it became the colony of Victoria with effect from the first of January 1851. Celebrations began in November and lasted five days. The final day, Saturday 23 November, was given over to a carnival of gymnastic games at Emerald Hill on Beach Road, and the last event was a football match. ‘FOOT-BALL—A match at foot-ball between two sides of 12 each concluded the sports. The game was all on one side from the beginning, and won easily by Mr Barry and his 11’.[5] No more detailed account of this game has been found so far. The crowd watching the games had started small but had grown throughout the day and despite the provision of alcohol, the papers reported that there had been no unseemly incidents. So this appears to have been a small-sided game for which no special explanation was necessary for the readers.

Earlier on 26 August 1850 an eleven-a-side football match had been played as a delayed item in the Victoria Gymnastic Games originally scheduled for 12 August, but actually played over two days. The advertisement for the games was clear. Event number 16 was ‘Football, Prize £11. Entrance 10s. The Prize to be awarded to the first eleven at the goal’.[6] Then on 26 August, the Argus noted: ‘The game of Foot-ball postponed from the late Gymnastic Games, has been appointed to come off today, at the Race Course …’.[7] So the following day the match was reported along with other events held on the Monday. ‘SPORTING—A very fair muster of the lovers of a little recreation, took place on the race course yesterday … After a little trifling in the shape of a pony race, the long talked of game of foot-ball came off, and excited very considerable interest and amusement, and led to a struggle which thoroughly used up several of our leading athletes’.[8] The football match was on the agenda the following year on the same terms as before.[9] The Argus reported, ‘The day's sports were concluded by a Football Match, at which several competitors contended, and, in spite of the rain, were engaged till a late hour in the evening.’[10]

In Geelong in November 1850 a three-day athletic festival included a six-a-side football match for a wager.[11] ‘The game of football came next, Mr Hobson being the umpire on one side and Mr M’Gillivray on the other. There were six players on each side. The arena was the cricket ground in the centre of which the ball was placed and the players stood facing each other at opposite angles of the ground. As the play proceeded, it looked 10 to 1 in favour of Mr Hobson’s side, but one of M’Gillivray’s party happened to give the ball a turn, it was taken up by Giles, another of M’Gillivray’s players, who managed to kick it through the proper panel, and so won the game. Prize – £3, entrance 3s’.[12] John Little in Ballarat was advertising cricket equipment just arrived from the best makers in London, but he also had ‘Foot balls, boxing gloves, foils and masks’, for sale in October 1859.[13] Platts in Hindley Street in Adelaide offered ‘Leather-covered India rubber foot-balls’ among their fresh supply just unpacked.[14]

In Castlemaine in Victoria, the local correspondent for the Argus bemoaned the absence of public celebration of the Queen’s birthday in 1855, but reported that a football match had taken place. ‘The Queen's birthday has been kept here in a fashion, the public offices have generally been closed. Some of the officials and of the townsmen have kept up a game of football in the Camp. There have been no parade, no salutes, no grand dinner nor ball and supper—no money for ammunition to fire a salute.’[15]

In New South Wales, a writer referring to the western outpost of Sydney at Parramatta wrote about the value of sports to the youth of Australia: ‘At all events, one thing is clear, that whenever a new township is formed, several portions of land should be set apart in the immediate vicinity of the town for the public benefit. Cricket, quoits, football, &c, are manly exercises, and ought to be encouraged, if we wish Australian youths to grow up a strong and athletic race.’[16] The local paper in Bathurst reported on sports at the Bushman’s Inn, on Monday 14 October 1850. Following a cricket match between the Bathurst gents and the bushmen of the neighbourhood, ‘this was succeeded by that healthy and invigorating old country game—a football match, at which a few of the sinewy sons of the soil showed themselves adepts.’[17] On Easter Tuesday 1853 a fete at Booral, Port Stephens, had games of cricket and football for the young men.[18] A match race for two pedestrians, Lynch and Cheeseman was scheduled to take place in Hyde Park in Sydney in June 1854 and ‘After the match it is expected a game of football will take place between two elevens to be picked on the ground’.[19] Footballs and hurling sticks were on sale at the Hyde Park Toy and Fancy Bazaar a decade earlier in 1844.[20]

The Reverend B Ashley took up the promotion of health on behalf of the Christian Knowledge Society. Reflecting the contemporary fear that Australians might be atrophying for want of exercise and the seduction of alcohol he recommended ‘Cricket; football; quoits; swinging; trap-ball; leaping over a moveable bar, or with poles; parallel bars to exercise the arms; leap-frog; or shuttle-cock, a number of persons standing in a circle. Such recreation would tend to draw men from the debasing habits of drinking and licentiousness, and the exercise would promote health, diffuse a feeling of lightness through the body, and increase cheerfulness of mind.’[21]

In Tasmania a Grand Fete Champetre on Boxing Day 1850 was advertised to be held on the Regatta Ground. ‘Different Amusements, including Football, Hurling Matches, Dancing, and running for the Pig will be prepared on the Ground.’[22] Earlier in the year, a correspondent to the Colonial Times was exercised about the desecration of the Sabbath on Sunday 1 September 1850 ‘by a party of 70 or 80 composed of boys, youths and children and some of a larger growth, men of somewhat respectable exterior, devoting themselves to a game at foot-ball; and what made the matter worse, the language—cursing and swearing, and shouting were such as would be considered infamous on a market day.’[23] This might have been an example of the old villages game, but it is equally likely that it started as a small-sided game among a group of players and grew as others joined in. The following year after the election of Mr Gregson as representative for Richmond, ‘In the afternoon a match at football took place in a large paddock near the township.’[24]

Football cannot have been associated with violence in the minds of the Tasmanian authorities for when the committee organising the Richmond Jubilee on 10 August 1853 wanted to celebrate the cessation of transportation to van Diemen’s Land they did so with ‘games of cricket, foot-ball, quoits, pigeon-shooting, running and jumping and other sports’ for prizes.[25] Nobody had to instruct the young people who attended. ‘The youngsters were very early, and while the guns (fifty) were yet discharging to collect the people, set to foot-ball, and one or two pretty cricket-matches were played.’[26] The Sorell Jubilee on 7 September 1853 also had ‘general sports of the day: cricket, football, etc, etc’.[27] The following year the advertisement for the Ploughing Match at Richmond had a final offering, ‘A foot-ball and other sports will take place during the day.’[28] The football matches (plural) at this one turned out to be more like the village games as a couple of players finished up in a creek and another ‘tumbled into the midst of a group of gentle dames’.[29] The Queen’s Birthday celebrations in Longford included several prizes for juveniles, ‘Foot Ball, cricket, jumping in sacks, throwing the hammer’.[30]

The expedition to the Arctic in 1850 by Sir John Ross searching for Sir John Franklin, the former governor of Van Diemen’s Land, was reported in the Perth Gazette in Western Australia and the Courier in Tasmania, including this item, ‘Ample time was allowed to the crews of both ships to meet each other and games of foot-ball and other exercises relieved the monotony which surrounded them.’[31]

All these references predate the codification of football in Australia and the United Kingdom but make clear that the game was embedded in the social lives of migrants as it was in their homelands. Football is often mentioned as just one of a list of sports that have taken place or are planned. For example, ‘There will be games of all kinds, cricket, quoits, football, throwing the hammer, etc.’ ran a report on the plans to celebrate at a public holiday in Geelong on 14 December 1855.[32] The word football was in common use in political and other discourse as metaphor and image.[33] The very fact that football did not have to be explained to readers—it could be taken for granted—reinforces this point.[34]

The social composition of the footballers is only just beginning to be studied and it is likely that some of the participants had good, sometimes first hand, experience of the games being played in the public schools in England.[35] When debates about a common code of rules took place later in the decade the newspapers and the accounts of the deliberations make clear that the rules of these schools were thoroughly considered by the people concerned.[36] Nevertheless the claim by Tom Wills, who was educated at Rugby, to have introduced the game of football to Victoria in 1858 is unsustainable.[37]

None of these matches in 1850 and through to 1859 led, as far as is known, to the setting up of a continuing organisation or the promulgation of a set of rules, unlike the meeting of Wills and three or four others at the Parade Hotel in Melbourne which wrote down a set of rules for the Melbourne football club. But then in the 1860s and probably for some time thereafter, clubs were formed for the duration of the relevant season, but had to be reconstituted the following year. Also it is well into the 1870s before there is anything like general agreement on one set of rules for football, even though sets of rules were debated and written down in both England and Australia.[38]

Now there is no claim that similar evidence can be found for every year following the arrival of the Europeans in Australia and there were probably periods when the game disappeared from the printed press sources mentioned here. But it is becoming clear that there was much more football being played in areas quite remote from the Home Counties of England in the United Kingdom and its colonies than has been discussed so far. Any suggestion that this empirical research is driven by a quasi-political agenda to elevate the working class contribution to the sport misses the point. More empirical research to underpin theoretical analysis is what I have been advocating since I started writing on the early history of the game.[39]

The notion that people had to be taught the game of football by the public school men as distinct from having their games codified and organised on a broader basis by them has always seemed an inadequate explanation of the processes involved. The explosion of popularity of football within a generation has always been inexplicable in those terms and it is that which is the key feature of both the game of Association football in the United Kingdom and overseas, and the game of Australian football in the southern states of Australia.