Australian Football

John Acraman was arguably the single most pivotal figure in the inception of organised football in Adelaide, and may also have played a part in helping ensure that the code of football ultimately favoured was closely based on the Victorian model. An Englishman by birth, Acraman imported five footballs to South Australia and is reputed to have erected the first set of goal posts used in the colony.

In April 1860 he met with Henry Harrison, the ‘father of the Victorian game’, at the Globe Inn in Adelaide, and shortly afterwards the Adelaide Football Club appears to have been established. An avid player during the 1860s, Acraman was still directly involved in the game, as president of Adelaide, when the South Australian Football Association was formed in 1877. He was one of ten vice presidents appointed by the SAFA at its inaugural meeting, and later also spent time as vice president of the North Adelaide Football Club.

Author - John Devaney