Burg
QCup Player
- Mar 4, 2008
- 565
- 20
http://rl1908.com/blog/afl-hoax.htm
CLAIMS that Australian football was born of a single match played in 1858 are nonsensical, writes rugby league historian Sean Fagan
You've got to admire Australian rules - they will use any excuse for a party.
On top of the seemingly never ending themes given to market regular weekend rounds, there are the yearly milestones. In 1996 it was the centenary of the VFL/AFL. Then in 1999 it was 10 seasons of the AFL. In 2008 the AFL will “celebrate 150 years since the first game of what is now known as Australian football on August 7, 1858.â€Â
Australian rules lore tells us the code began with a match in 1858.
What the "Australian rulers'' don't choose to mention is that it was played between school-boys (Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar) and they used rugby rules on a rectangular field.
They also don't mention that the first uniquely Australian rule - the need to bounce the ball every five or six yards - wasn't adopted until 1866, nor explain why it was introduced. The fact that the rule was needed at all provides direct evidence rugby's unique feature of unrestricted running with the ball was a prominent part of Melbourne football from 1858 to 1866.
Many texts on Australian rules cite the "mark" rule of 1859 as the code's first distinctive innovation, ignoring that the equivalent "fair catch" rule has existed in rugby since at least its first documented laws in 1845, and then continued in all the other football codes that evolved from rugby.
In the 1880s the Melbourne game still had on-side rugby kick-offs and was played on rectangular fields (even on oval grounds such as the MCG). The "high mark" had just come into the game. Until that same decade, punching the ball to a team mate had been a common trait of rugby too (hand-passing the ball was an 1880s innovation that accompanied the Welsh introduction of the three-quarter line to rugby).
According to Geoffrey Blainey in A Game of Our Own, match reports in newspapers reveal that rugby's "off-side" still existed in Australian rules. These rugby traditions were still so strong that there was no need to explain them in the written laws in Australian football. [A Game of Our Own]
In Sydney at that time both codes were being played. Many footballers interchanged between clubs and codes depending upon their whim. George 'Jumbo' Walker played for NSW in both rugby and Victorian rules.
In 1888 a touring British rugby team (the majority of whom came from clubs in Yorkshire and Lancashire) played 18 Victorian rules matches in Victoria and South Australia. Hugely popular, the British played Carlton at the MCG in front of 25,000. Their opponents also included South Melbourne, Fitzroy, Essendon, Port Melbourne and Port Adelaide.
Even as late as 1933 the VFL and NSWRL still saw enough common ground in their games that they seriously contemplated creating a merged football code.
To say that the 1858 match was the game now known as Australian rules is nonsense. To paraphrase Kipling, "rugby is rugby'' - what came after doesn't change what was played in 1858.
The AFL is looking at a caterpillar and calling it a butterfly.
The only connection that game has with Australian football is that it was played in Melbourne.
Many clubs in England, including those playing "Sheffield rules'' (from the Sheffield FC formed in 1857), began with a remarkably similar story to the first "Melbourne rules'' (1859).
Sheffield rules were formed "to keep cricketers fit in winter'', had no crossbar, awarded a free-kick for a mark, and recorded "minor points'' for missing a goal.
Rugby spread through the Empire like wildfire in 1857 and 1858 on the enormous popularity of Tom Brown's Schooldays, a book about Tom's fantastical life at Rugby School. Tom was the Harry Potter of his day. The book included a dramatic and enticing chapter about the joys and excitement of a football game.
Rugby rules in the 1850s were scant - for most part they only covered matters where there had previously been argument.
They set out what could not be done, rather than what could. At the start of each winter the schoolboys would haggle and find consensus on the rules for the coming matches. It was their prerogative to shape rugby rules each year however they wished.
When the first clubs were formed, their members did the same. In England, this created mayhem as every club had its own take on the rules. Those favouring a kicking game codified their rules into soccer in 1863 with the formation of the FA.
The "ball-carriers'' codified in 1871 by forming the RFU.
Other versions, including Sheffield rules, disappeared as soccer and rugby consumed all else.
But Melbourne football, geographically isolated, continued to evolve on its own, and was codified in 1877 when the VFA was formed.
Since federation the Victorian-born code has screeched that the rest of the nation should adopt the game "invented by Australians for Australians''.
At first they covered over the story of their true origins; and now, generations later, have forgotten it.
To admit now that its so-called first game was rugby, and that the code wasn't "invented'' by Australian ingenuity in 1858, but that instead it took decades before a uniquely Australian game existed, will no doubt be difficult to accept.
But now that Australian rules has gained greater exposure in NSW and Queensland, it has in effect returned to the wider football world. Its marketing messages will be received by not only those devoted to its code, but by others who will question the validity of the stories being told.
The isolation of Australian rules is over. That can be taken as a sign of successful expansion. But with it will come greater scrutiny, and even occasional criticism.
Interestingly, if inventing an Australian football code was such an imperative for the Victorians, why didn't they see any need to contort the rules of cricket, the most English game of all?
CLAIMS that Australian football was born of a single match played in 1858 are nonsensical, writes rugby league historian Sean Fagan
You've got to admire Australian rules - they will use any excuse for a party.
On top of the seemingly never ending themes given to market regular weekend rounds, there are the yearly milestones. In 1996 it was the centenary of the VFL/AFL. Then in 1999 it was 10 seasons of the AFL. In 2008 the AFL will “celebrate 150 years since the first game of what is now known as Australian football on August 7, 1858.â€Â
Australian rules lore tells us the code began with a match in 1858.
What the "Australian rulers'' don't choose to mention is that it was played between school-boys (Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar) and they used rugby rules on a rectangular field.
They also don't mention that the first uniquely Australian rule - the need to bounce the ball every five or six yards - wasn't adopted until 1866, nor explain why it was introduced. The fact that the rule was needed at all provides direct evidence rugby's unique feature of unrestricted running with the ball was a prominent part of Melbourne football from 1858 to 1866.
Many texts on Australian rules cite the "mark" rule of 1859 as the code's first distinctive innovation, ignoring that the equivalent "fair catch" rule has existed in rugby since at least its first documented laws in 1845, and then continued in all the other football codes that evolved from rugby.
In the 1880s the Melbourne game still had on-side rugby kick-offs and was played on rectangular fields (even on oval grounds such as the MCG). The "high mark" had just come into the game. Until that same decade, punching the ball to a team mate had been a common trait of rugby too (hand-passing the ball was an 1880s innovation that accompanied the Welsh introduction of the three-quarter line to rugby).
According to Geoffrey Blainey in A Game of Our Own, match reports in newspapers reveal that rugby's "off-side" still existed in Australian rules. These rugby traditions were still so strong that there was no need to explain them in the written laws in Australian football. [A Game of Our Own]
In Sydney at that time both codes were being played. Many footballers interchanged between clubs and codes depending upon their whim. George 'Jumbo' Walker played for NSW in both rugby and Victorian rules.
In 1888 a touring British rugby team (the majority of whom came from clubs in Yorkshire and Lancashire) played 18 Victorian rules matches in Victoria and South Australia. Hugely popular, the British played Carlton at the MCG in front of 25,000. Their opponents also included South Melbourne, Fitzroy, Essendon, Port Melbourne and Port Adelaide.
Even as late as 1933 the VFL and NSWRL still saw enough common ground in their games that they seriously contemplated creating a merged football code.
To say that the 1858 match was the game now known as Australian rules is nonsense. To paraphrase Kipling, "rugby is rugby'' - what came after doesn't change what was played in 1858.
The AFL is looking at a caterpillar and calling it a butterfly.
The only connection that game has with Australian football is that it was played in Melbourne.
Many clubs in England, including those playing "Sheffield rules'' (from the Sheffield FC formed in 1857), began with a remarkably similar story to the first "Melbourne rules'' (1859).
Sheffield rules were formed "to keep cricketers fit in winter'', had no crossbar, awarded a free-kick for a mark, and recorded "minor points'' for missing a goal.
Rugby spread through the Empire like wildfire in 1857 and 1858 on the enormous popularity of Tom Brown's Schooldays, a book about Tom's fantastical life at Rugby School. Tom was the Harry Potter of his day. The book included a dramatic and enticing chapter about the joys and excitement of a football game.
Rugby rules in the 1850s were scant - for most part they only covered matters where there had previously been argument.
They set out what could not be done, rather than what could. At the start of each winter the schoolboys would haggle and find consensus on the rules for the coming matches. It was their prerogative to shape rugby rules each year however they wished.
When the first clubs were formed, their members did the same. In England, this created mayhem as every club had its own take on the rules. Those favouring a kicking game codified their rules into soccer in 1863 with the formation of the FA.
The "ball-carriers'' codified in 1871 by forming the RFU.
Other versions, including Sheffield rules, disappeared as soccer and rugby consumed all else.
But Melbourne football, geographically isolated, continued to evolve on its own, and was codified in 1877 when the VFA was formed.
Since federation the Victorian-born code has screeched that the rest of the nation should adopt the game "invented by Australians for Australians''.
At first they covered over the story of their true origins; and now, generations later, have forgotten it.
To admit now that its so-called first game was rugby, and that the code wasn't "invented'' by Australian ingenuity in 1858, but that instead it took decades before a uniquely Australian game existed, will no doubt be difficult to accept.
But now that Australian rules has gained greater exposure in NSW and Queensland, it has in effect returned to the wider football world. Its marketing messages will be received by not only those devoted to its code, but by others who will question the validity of the stories being told.
The isolation of Australian rules is over. That can be taken as a sign of successful expansion. But with it will come greater scrutiny, and even occasional criticism.
Interestingly, if inventing an Australian football code was such an imperative for the Victorians, why didn't they see any need to contort the rules of cricket, the most English game of all?
