Tom Wills grave restoration: one of the fathers of football needs our help
Australia’s first sporting legend and the father of Australian football lies in a crumbling grave in a Melbourne cemetery.
With a largely unknown but extraordinary life story, Tom Wills deserves a final resting place in better condition.
With the blessing of the Wills family, The Footy Almanac is now raising funds to renovate the gravesite of our first cricketing hero who also gave Australians our own spectacular game.
The project will cost about $15,000 and with millions of AFL supporters and cricket lovers, the Australian public should be able to do the right thing by this man and restore his gravesite to its former glory.
In doing so we wish to draw attention to his remarkable life that started within a pioneering farming family before becoming a young cricketing hero in England, colonial star for Victoria then outback Queensland station manager. After personal tragedy, he formed, mentored and coached the first aboriginal cricket team that later became the first Australian team to tour England.
Enigmatic, controversial and egalitarian are words used to describe a man whose immense sporting foresight lives on today.
His strong personal relationships with the aboriginal people of western Victoria were cemented in sport and provide inspiration for modern day reconciliation.
Please donate what you can to a remarkable man who gave Australian sport so much via https://ozcrowd.com/campaign/2447
The Tom Wills project is an initiative of Marius Cuming, Phil Dimitriadis and John Harms of www.footyalmanac.com.au
You can read more on the project by clicking here.
Comments
Tony Mic 30 May 2016
I have visited Tom Wills grave in the Warringal Cemetery and concur that it is desperately in need of restoration. It was originally provided by public subscription as it is once again by crowd funding. Considering the millions of dollars generated by the AFL I wonder why the AFL HQ do not fund this project?
Also, what about the same treatment for Tom's cousin HCA Harrison buried in the Boroondara Cemetery in High St, Kew? Other name his name on the grave there is no public awareness of who is buried there, at the least there shoudl be a plaque to inform people. Without Wills and Harrison there would be no AFL today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._C._A._Harrison
Harrison's cousin, champion cricketer Tom Wills, founded Australian rules football in 1859, and within a year, Harrison joined him in promoting the new code. Harrison and Wills were the only pioneer figures to be inaugural inductees of the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 1996.
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