Australian rules football in England
In England, Australian rules football is a team and spectator sport with a long history. It is home to the longest running Australian rules fixture outside Australia, the match between Oxford and Cambridge Universities which has been contested annually since 1923. All other current competitions originated in 1989 with the founding of what is now AFL London, the longest running Australian rules football league in Europe. The current governing body, AFL England, was formed in 2012 and expanded the game in 2018 to include the additional regional divisions: AFL Central & Northern England and AFL Southern England.
The sport's origins are said to be in England, specifically public school football games. Several of the sport's founders were born and educated there including J. B. Thompson, William Hammersley and James Bryant while Tom Wills held by many as the sport's founder, was educated at and played rugby with the Rugby School. However it struggled for decades to establish roots given the dominance of traditional football codes in rugby football and the growing popularity of soccer. Nevertheless, it was one of the first countries outside of Australia where the game was played in the 1880s and to host regular competition.
Australian Football League exhibition matches were held at The Oval in London semi-annually between 1986 and 2006 and were well attended with attendances ranging from 4,500 to a record of 18,884 in 2005.
England rarely competes in a standalone team, and is typically represented along with Scotland and Wales as the Great Britain team at the Australian Football International Cup and AFL Europe Championship. However, an English side has competed in several standalone tests and has been successful at the Euro Cup with 5 titles. Nevertheless, London has hosted several internationals, including the 2001 Atlantic Alliance Cup, 2005 and 2015 EU Cups and the 2016 and 2019 AFL Europe Championships.
English born players have been successful at the sport's highest level. In the AFL Bill Eason has the most games with 220 and most goals with 187. In the AFL Women's, Sabrina Frederick has the most games and goals.
History of Australian rules football in England
English involvement in the game's establishment in Australia
According to the AFL, the sport's origins were in England with public school football games being adopted by Australians in the 1850s leading to the creation of what is now known as Australian Football in Melbourne in the British Colony of Victoria in 1859. Several of the sport's founders were English including J. B. Thompson, William Hammersley and James Bryant, with Tom Wills having been educated at and played rugby football with the Rugby School.File:Victorian cricket team 1859.jpg|thumb|William Hammersley, J. B. Thompson, Jerry Bryant and Tom Wills, each having strong connections to England, met in 1859 to establish what is now known as Australian football.
Writing to Wills in 1871, Thompson recalled that "the Rugby, Eton, Harrow, and Winchester rules at that time came under our consideration,... we all but unanimously agreed that regulations which suited schoolboys... would not be patiently tolerated by grown men." The hardness of the playing fields around Melbourne also influenced their thinking. Even Wills, who favoured many rules of Rugby School football, saw the need for compromise. He wrote to his brother Horace: "Rugby was not a game for us, we wanted a winter pastime but men could be harmed if thrown on the ground so we thought differently."
While the game found its way to Ireland in the 1870s and there was also some awareness in England of the popularity of the game in Australia, it was not established locally until much later. This is primarily due to the growing popularity of locally developing football codes including rugby football and later British Association which, like Australian Football, were also developing from public school football games.
The English were also heavily involved in the development of the code in the 1860s and 1870s. George Metcalfe was instrumental in introducing at Newington College in Colony of New South Wales in 1867, the first school in the colony to known play football in any form. the 2nd Battalion of Fourteen Foot played in the first known match in the Colony of Western Australia in 1868. James Henry Gardiner founded the North Melbourne Football Club in 1869 which was later instrumental to unifying football rules in the Colony of Tasmania. John Acraman and Richard Twopeny were the key players in establishing it in the Colony of South Australia.
Early efforts to introduce the sport
Between 1870 and World War I many overseas students studied medicine in Scotland, and some went down to England to play the Australian Rules teams in that country.A Lancashire paper from 1881 mentions a local initiative to introduce "Victorian Rules Football" to England as an alternative to rugby and Association football.
In 1883, during a visit to Australia, English journalist and rugby player Richard Twopeny wrote of the game:
A good football match in Melbourne is one of the sights of the world... The quality of the play... is much superior to anything the best English clubs can produce... there is much more 'style' about the play.
In 1884 H C A Harrison then known as the "father of Australian Football" visited London where he proposed unifying Australian rules with Rugby under a set of hybrid rules and suggested that rugby clubs adopt some of the Victorian Rules. English football officials expressed their insult at the suggestion that they "abandon their rules to oblige an Antipodean game".
Nevertheless when first proposing a football tour of Australia and New Zealand in March 1887, James Lillywhite, Alfred Shaw and Arthur Shrewsbury posited that the best way to ensure the success of the venture would be to play under the Australian rules where the sport was most popular.
Australians studying at Edinburgh University and London University formed teams and competed in London in 1888.
Spurred on by the upcoming English football team's tour of Australia, a scratch match between Edinburgh Australians and London Australians was planned to be held at Balham on 14 April 1888. However the match was postponed citing lack of player numbers and suitability of the venue. It was finally played on 26 May 1888 at Balham, London won 4 goals to 2. There was little interest in the match outside of the Australian expat community. However the game was poorly organised and the selected ground was so out of the way that most spectators failed to find it, proving to be lost opportunity to promote the game. A return match was played on the same ground on the 30th May resulting in a draw. The match drew considerable praise in UK newspapers such as the Times and the Scotsman.
British tours to Australia (1888–1914)
Australian rules football was played by a British representative rugby team which toured Australia in 1888. The team arrived in Hobart, Tasmania on 18 April. They attended a social function with the Southern Tasmanian Football Association, before going to New Zealand for a series of rugby matches.After they returned to Australia they again trained in Australian rules in Sydney, before leaving for Victoria in mid-June. The tour included 19 matches. They played against several of the stronger football clubs from Melbourne including the Carlton Football Club, South Melbourne Football Club, Essendon Football Club, Fitzroy Football Club and Port Melbourne Football Club. Additionally, they played against some strong regional Victorian clubs including two teams from the city of Ballarat: Ballarat Football Club and Ballarat Imperial Football Club, as well as two teams from the city of Bendigo: Bendigo Football Club and Sandhurst Football Club as well as playing against clubs from other regional towns including the Castlemaine Football Club, Maryborough Football Club, Horsham Football Club and Kyneton Football Club.
The team also played against several of the stronger South Australian teams including South Adelaide Football Club, Port Adelaide Football Club, Adelaide Football Club, Norwood Football Club. The only club from outside of Victoria or South Australia which played against them was the Maitland Football Club. The British team won six matches, including a win over Port Adelaide at Adelaide Oval on 10 July 1888, and drew one.
The reigning Victorian premiers, Carlton defeated Great Britain at the MCG 14.17 to 3.8. At this stage goals and points were recorded but only goals counted in the score; for example, when Great Britain played Castlemaine under very heavy conditions they kicked 1 goal 2 points and the locals kicked 1 goal 4 points, but the match was declared a draw. Great Britain also played 35 games of rugby, making a total of 54 games in 21 weeks. A star of the team's Australian rules games was Andrew Stoddart, who captained the team for part of its tour and also captained England in cricket.
The 1888 tour had been organised by the English cricketer Arthur Shrewsbury but his involvement with Australian Rules football did not end there. He planned to have an Australian team sent to the United Kingdom to play a series of demonstration matches and to that end he looked to Scotland where he had identified possible opponents. Shrewsbury's plans are outlined in his correspondence with Alfred Shaw and Turner, the Nottingham Cricket Club Secretary.
First Competitions
Shrewsbury suggested that the 'Edinburgh Australians' team at Edinburgh University should travel down to England to meet the Australian team in a series of demonstration matches in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Unfortunately his bold plan did not eventuate as the authorities in Australia aborted the venture and a possible expansion of Australian Rules in the UK was lost.In 1894, a dramatic costume football match was played at the East Melbourne Cricket Ground involving prominent English celebrities Jennie Lee, Wallace Brownlow and Harry Musgrove.
There were reports from Australia that the game was being played in England between two clubs in 1903 and in 1904. By 1906 there were three clubs holding regular competition two of which were in London. The Oxford University Australian Rules Football Club was founded in 1906.
As early as 1911 the game was being played regularly at Oxford. The Cambridge University Australian Rules Football Club is believed to have been founded around 1911. In 1911 Oxford University captained by Alfred Clemens defeated Cambridge University captained by Ron Larking 13.9 to 5.12. In 1914, H C A Harrison reported that the game was being played regularly at both Oxford and Cambridge universities though few records exist of contests between 1911 and 1921.