FROM THE NEWSPAPERS – 1858-59

The Argus 16 August 1858:

Football seems to be coming into fashion in Melbourne, and as it is a most manly and amusing game we hope that it may continue to grow in favour until it becomes as popular as cricket.

To lookers-on a well-contested football match is as interesting a sight as can be conceived, the chances, changes, and ludicrous contretemps are so frequent, and the
whole affair so animated and inspiriting.

Let those who fancy there is little in the game, read the account of one of the Rugby matches which is detailed in that most readable work, Tom Brown’s Schooldays, and they will speedily alter their opinion.

The Herald 23 August 1858: 

The game of football promises, as it deserves to be, one of the popular amusements of the ingenuous youth of Victoria. Hitherto, a modification of the Rugby rules has been adopted, which, in the opinion of some, might be altered for the better.

The Argus 16 April 1859:

…for football clubs in almost all the suburbs are either being formed or re organised. Whether that manly and healthy book, “Tom Brown’s School Days,” or the natural anti-American tendencies of Victoria, adult and adolescent, or a little of both, have produced such a love for robust exercise, it matters not to inquire, Football, like cricket, has become an institution in and about the metropolis, and it would not be surprising if the epidemic spread wider.

The Argus 16 May 1859: 

This proceeding is the more necessary as exceptions were taken last year to some of the Rugby regulations, which even a perusal of Tom Browns Schooldays has not made altogether palatable to other than old Rugbeians.

THE SCHOOLBOYS MATCH – 7 August 1858 & others

The most ludicrous AFL claim is that the schoolboys Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar match in 1858 was the first organised game of Australian rules football. 

What the they don’t choose to mention is that the schoolboys used Rugby rules on a rectangular field, which meant an on-side kick-off in the middle of the field. The statue outside the MCG shows the boys fighting for possession of a Rugby ball.

In Rugby School tradition the game was played out by excessively large “big side” teams (40-players each) over three separate afternoons spread out over a month (7 August was the first day – the last day of the match was 4 September 1858).

Correspondent for the Geelong Advertiser:

The match commenced at twelve o’clock, when nearly eighty combatants mustered. The authorities of the schools have apparently taken every precaution against what is intended to be a healthy amusement degenerating into one of party strife.

The game, no doubt by necessity, had an umpire who was a Rugby School ‘old boy’, namely Tom Wills. The end result was a draw with both teams landing a goal. 

The Argus on 24 April 1914 carried a letter in reference to the first football at Scotch College, written by the school’s headmaster:

…the game was introduced into the school by one of the masters, a Mr Harvey, from Rugby at some time in the fifties. The exact date is unknown, but it was not later than 1858. Indeed, old boys of the school have always claimed that Mr Harvey was the pioneer of football in Victoria.

Geoffrey Blainey in his AFL history book ‘A Game of Our Own’:

It is on record at Scotch College that one of its masters, Harvey, imported six footballs from England and taught some of his students to play football in the school yard: their code was probably Rugby, from which school he is said to have come.

CRICKETERS EXERCISING FOOTBALL MATCH – 28 August 1858 

The Argus 30 August 1858

FOOTBALL. — The neighborhood of the cricket-ground in Richmond Park was rendered lively on Saturday afternoon by a match at football which was played by about 50 gentlemen-members of the Melbourne Cricket Club and others.

THE MELBOURNE PUNCH MATCH – 25 September 1858

Bell’s Life in Victoria 25 September 1858:

Another exciting match will be played to-day, the contending parties being an equal number from South Yarra and Melbourne. The latter are said to have the advantage as far as practice goes, but the former bring with them the prestige of old Winchester and Rugby experiences, as well as of perfect discipline.

At the end of September 1858, Melbourne Punch published a poem detailing a twenty-a-side (possibly more) rugby match in Richmond Paddock (now Yarra Park) between gentlemen from the South Yarra and members of the Melbourne cricket club.

To modern eyes it appears to present a contest that was an overblown kick-to-kick affair, however on closer scrutiny the to and fro exhibits all the features of Rugby football of the ‘Tom Brown Schooldays’ era, with 20-players (or perhaps 25) on each side, hours of play without the scoring of any goal, the main feature being a relentless afternoon-long scrimmage of the two engaged packs moving up and down the field, kicking of each others feet, shins and legs, a football dribbling rush enforced by men pushing from behind in rows. The goal posts have four flags tied as a cross-bar between the goal posts, and the ball is a spheroid (Rugby ball).

Each twenty men with forty soles,
Safe guarding their respective goals.
And now the kicking fun begins,
The battle of the toes and shins;
Down went the ball, and, crushing thick,
The strife was great for primal kick

The description of Melbourne’s winning kick is of the convoluted “punt out” (“out-kicked their friends”) goal conversion attempt process that occurs in Rugby football at this time after a try is run-in.

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

 

THE RUGBY LEGACY
What we can now see is that the pioneer football code of Australia was Rugby football, not Australian rules. After all, if the Melbourne FC’s rule-makers were endeavouring to improve on Rugby football, then logically, Rugby must be the older code, and must have been the game that was being played here first.

The Argus 1 August 1908: 

“the Australian game…is none the less a child of Rugby.”

© Sean Fagan