The navigator Matthew Flinders—sailing on the aptly named sloop, HMS Investigator—mapped the Victorian coastline with meticulous precision, leaving behind a clear and undeniable picture. Conversely, in more than 150 years, local attempts at investigating and mapping the early history of Victoria’s football landscape have all ended mired and scuttled in wishful thinking.

Story written & researched by Sean Fagan for SaintsAndHeathens

The origins of Australian Rules football—codified initially as the Victorian Rules code by the Melbourne Football Club—are frequently enveloped in a narrative that views its unique physical traits as a radical break from European traditions. Modern commentary often relies on imaginative speculation to attribute the game’s most iconic features—namely, the tactical kick out of hands and the high-leaping catch—to distinct, localised inspirations.

However, a rigorous chronological analysis of the contemporary print archives, early sports journalism, and the original 1859 rule book reveals a clear, linear descent from English public school football, specifically the code developed at Rugby School. Every core mechanism of the early Australian game was imported directly by colonial sportsmen who were reproducing an athletic framework they had already perfected in the United Kingdom. When the contemporary sources used to claim a unique local origin are examined objectively, they reveal their pure English public school lineage.

The Anatomy of Rule 6: An English Legal Blueprint

To understand how the early Australian game was constructed, one must look directly at the primary text of the first rules. A foundational piece of evidence often cited to argue for a unique local kicking and catching culture is Rule 6 of the Melbourne Football Club’s rules, published in May 1859:

“Any player catching the ball directly from the foot may call ‘mark’. He then has a free kick, no player from the opposite side being allowed to come inside the spot marked.”

Some analyses of this rule argue that the italicised emphasis on the word “directly” is a covert, descriptive nod to a specific type of localised kick, such as a punt. Statistically and logically, however, this interpretation completely flips cause and effect.

Rule 6 is not a rule governing how to kick; it is a rule strictly defining the parameters of a legal catch. The word “directly” serves a simple, defensive legal purpose: it mandates that the ball must travel cleanly from a player’s boot into an opponent’s or teammate’s hands without hitting the ground, deflecting off a tree, the goal post, or skimming off a bystander first.

This phrase was not a novel invention drafted in Melbourne in 1859. It was copied almost verbatim from the established football rules of Rugby School (1845):

“Fair Catch is a catch direct from the foot.”

“If a player makes a Fair Catch, he shall be entitled to a free kick, provided he claims it, by making a mark with his heel at once…”

Tom Wills and his fellow committee members did not invent the concept of an unhindered free kick resulting from an airborne catch, nor did they invent the terminology. They took the existing, standard English definition of a “fair catch”—which applied to all forms of legal kicking in England, whether a place kick, drop kick, or punt—and pasted it directly into the Melbourne rulebook.

Misreading the Imagery: The 1859 Hammersley Verse

When looking for early signs of an aerial game, analysts frequently turn to the creative sports reporting of the 1850s. Just over a week after the first rules were drawn up, a scratch match was reported in verse by Bell’s Life in Victoria on May 28, 1859. The poem describes a player named Hammersley on the field:

“Swift as an eagle on the wing
Holds fast the ball, then with a sudden spring
He leaps high in the air and kicks the volume round.”

Modern interpretations have pointed to this verse as definitive proof that high-leaping catches of the ball were a distinguishing feature of the game from day one. But a basic mechanical reading of the text destroys this claim. The poem explicitly notes that Hammersley “Holds fast the ball” before he makes his move. He is already in possession of the football.

The subsequent line, “then with a sudden spring / He leaps high in the air and kicks the volume round,” describes a player jumping off the ground to execute a powerful kick out of his hands. Leaving the ground with both feet to execute a drop-kick or the less common punt was a standard then, and even now, to maximise forward momentum. Nineteenth-century sports illustrations and woodcuts consistently depict this.

The Universal Instinct: Mr. Pip’s 1862 Eyewitness Account

As the game progressed into the 1860s, eyewitness accounts confirm players were jumping to catch the ball. In 1862, a sports journalist writing under the pseudonym “Mr. Pip” for Bell’s Life in Victoria reported on a match, noting that:

“…one Melbourne youth jumped wonderfully high in the air and caught the ball ere it came near the others and called ‘Mark’.”

While this quote does explicitly describe a high catch, “wonderfully high” must be read relative to the times—treating it as evidence of a unique local innovation and an early form of a 20th century shoulder-lifted ‘speccy’ ignores the basic mechanics of boys at play in many games and pastimes, whether English or not.

As shown above, footballers were jumping when kicking the football. There is of course from Rugby School the jumping involved in the boundary line-outs in football, and mere boyish larking about, as mentioned in ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays‘:

“There is young Brooke and the bulldogs. Mark them well. They are the ‘fighting brigade,’ the ‘diehards,’ larking about at leapfrog to keep themselves warm, and playing tricks on one another.”

Crucially, Mr. Pip’s account reflects the protocol of rugby football: the player caught the ball and immediately shouted “Mark!”. Now, perhaps at Rugby School the boys weren’t as in Melbourne shouting out “Mark!” when “making a mark” to claim a “fair catch” for a “free kick”, but the word “mark” and process is lifted straight from the laws of rugby.

For a player’s jump to be described as “wonderfully high”, it cannot be a commonplace occurrence, nor yet a distinguishing feature of the game. The aptly named “Free Kick” writing in Bell’s Life in Victoria in 1864 plainly states:

“…we often find a game lasting a whole afternoon with only one goal being kicked, and notwithstanding our allowing a “free kick” for a catch, we have plenty of scrummaging, and at times rather severe.”

Punch and the “Punt-Out”

Perhaps the most glaring misstep by those trying to detach early Victorian rules football from its British roots involves an early match between South Yarra and Melbourne that drew significant newspaper attention. The match was reported on not only by The Argus (briefly) but also by Punch magazine, which published a long stanza descriptive poem detailing the events on the football field.

Modern commentary notes that it was a highly significant game, even a nascent form of Victorian rules football. The evidence within the Punch poem itself completely refutes this idea. The poem describes a 27 men-a-side rugby game, culminating at the end with the convoluted Rugby School “punt-out” and “try at goal.”

“However, as the story ends,
The Melbourne mob out-kicked their friends,
And fair within the fatal stick,
With one triumphant joyous kick
And mad delight, still waxing madder,
They sent the India-rubber bladder.
The goal was passed, the day was won”

It is a set of mechanics that could only originate from the specialised, legalistic traditions of the English public school system. Early Victorian football matches were so heavily bound to this British import that they faithfully recreated these exact, complicated routines on the grass of Melbourne.

The Evolution Beyond British Borders: Punts and High Marks

To complete the historical picture chronologically, it must be acknowledged that the sport eventually underwent a distinct tactical mutation that separated it from its British pedigree. While the early foundation was entirely British, the modern, highly recognisable hallmarks of today’s AFL game—specifically the universal reliance on the punt kick and the development of the spectacular high mark—were not present at the sport’s inception in 1859. Instead, they entered the game as dramatic innovations in the late 19th century.

During the code’s formative era, the place kick and the drop kick were the absolute dominant kicking techniques, used universally by all to land goals. Conversely, the punt kick was dismissed by contemporary media and coaches as “the treacherous punt”—a low-return option left primarily to novice rookie players. It was not until the 1880s and subsequent decades that this dynamic flipped. [Link]

As teams gradually mastered the innovation of forwards leaping high into the air to secure a “mark,” the punt kick’s ability to deliver the ball rapidly and directly into the sky began to heavily outweigh the drop kick’s reliance on a lower, chest-height trajectory.

The specific social, cultural, and environmental influences that drove Victorian players to adopt high-marking which led to punt-kicks dominating, are localised developments heading into the 20th century.

These evolutions are of no interest and we leave to others to explain.

© Sean Fagan