Australian rules football
Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by kicking the ovoid ball between the central goal posts, or between a central and outer post.
During general play, players may position themselves anywhere on the field and use any part of their bodies to move the ball. The primary methods are kicking, handballing and running with the ball. There are rules on how the ball can be handled; for example, players running with the ball must intermittently bounce or touch it on the ground. Throwing the ball is not allowed, and players must not get caught holding the ball. A distinctive feature of the game is the mark, where players anywhere on the field who catch the ball from a kick are awarded unimpeded possession. Possession of the ball is in dispute at all times except when a free kick or mark is paid. Players can tackle using their hands or use their whole body to obstruct opponents. Dangerous physical contact, interference when marking, and deliberately slowing the play are discouraged with free kicks, distance penalties, or suspension for a certain number of matches depending on the severity of the infringement. The game features frequent physical contests, spectacular marking, fast movement of both players and the ball, and high scoring.
The sport's origins can be traced to football matches played in Melbourne, Victoria, in 1858, inspired by English public school football games. Seeking to develop a game more suited to adults and Australian conditions, the Melbourne Football Club published the first laws of Australian football in May 1859.
Australian football has the highest spectator attendance of all sports in Australia while the Australian Football League, the sport's only fully professional competition, is the nation's wealthiest sporting body. The AFL Grand Final, held annually at the 100,000-capacity Melbourne Cricket Ground, is the highest-attended club championship event of any football code. The sport is also played at amateur level in many countries and in several variations. Its rules are governed by the AFL Commission with the advice of the AFL's Laws of the Game Committee.
Name
Australian football is known by several nicknames, including Australian rules football, Aussie rules, football and footy. In some regions, where other codes of football are more popular, the sport is most often called AFL after the Australian Football League, while the league itself also uses this name for local competitions in some areas.History
Origins
Primitive forms of football were played sporadically in the Australian colonies in the first half of the 19th century. Compared to cricket and horse racing, football was considered a mere "amusement" by colonists at the time, and while little is known about these early one-off games, evidence does not support a causal link with Australian football. In Melbourne, in 1858, in a move that would help to shape Australian football in its formative years, private schools began organising football games inspired by precedents at English public schools. The earliest match, held on 15 June, was between Melbourne Grammar and St Kilda Grammar.On 10 July 1858, the Melbourne-based Bell's Life in Victoria and Sporting Chronicle published a letter by Tom Wills, captain of the Victoria cricket team, calling for the formation of a "foot-ball club" with a "code of laws" to keep cricketers fit during winter. Born in Australia, Wills played a nascent form of rugby football while a pupil at Rugby School in England, and returned to his homeland a star athlete and cricketer. Two weeks later, Wills' friend, cricketer Jerry Bryant, posted an advertisement for a scratch match at the Richmond Paddock adjoining the Melbourne Cricket Ground. This was the first of several "kickabouts" held that year involving members of the Melbourne Cricket Club, including Wills, Bryant, W. J. Hammersley and J. B. Thompson. Trees were used as goalposts and play typically lasted an entire afternoon. Without an agreed-upon code of laws, some players were guided by rules they had learned in the British Isles, "others by no rules at all". Another milestone in 1858 was a 40-a-side match played under experimental rules between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College, held at the Richmond Paddock. Umpired by Wills and teacher John Macadam, it began on 7 August and continued over two subsequent Saturdays, ending in a draw with each side kicking one goal. It is commemorated with a statue outside the MCG, and the two schools have since competed annually in the Cordner–Eggleston Cup, the world's oldest continuous football competition.
Since the 1920s, it has been suggested that Australian football may have been derived from the Irish sport of Gaelic football. However, there is no archival evidence in favour of a Gaelic influence, and the style of play shared between the two modern codes appeared in Australia long before the Irish game evolved in a similar direction. Another theory, first proposed in 1983, posits that Wills, having grown up among Aboriginals in Victoria, may have seen or played the Aboriginal ball game of Marn Grook, and incorporated some of its features into early Australian football. There is only circumstantial evidence that he knew of the game, and according to biographer Greg de Moore's research, Wills was "almost solely influenced by his experience at Rugby School".
First rules
A loosely organised Melbourne side, captained by Wills, played against other football enthusiasts in the winter and spring of 1858. The following year, on 14 May, the Melbourne Football Club was officially established, making it one of the world's oldest football clubs. Three days later, Wills, Hammersley, Thompson and teacher Thomas H. Smith met near the MCG at the Parade Hotel, owned by Bryant, and drafted ten rules: "The Rules of the Melbourne Football Club". These are the laws from which Australian football evolved. The club aimed to create a simple code suited to the hard playing surfaces around Melbourne, and to eliminate the roughest aspects of English school games—such as "hacking" in Rugby School football—to reduce the risk of injuries to working men. In another significant departure from English public school football, the Melbourne rules omitted any offside law. "The new code was as much a reaction against the school games as influenced by them", writes Mark Pennings. The rules were distributed throughout the colony; Thompson in particular did much to promote the new code in his capacity as a journalist.Early competition in Victoria
Following Melbourne's lead, Geelong and Melbourne University also formed football clubs in 1859. While many early Victorian teams participated in one-off matches, most had not yet formed clubs for regular competition. A South Yarra club devised its own rules. To ensure the supremacy of the Melbourne rules, the first club-level competition in Australia, the Caledonian Society's Challenge Cup, stipulated that only the Melbourne rules were to be used. This law was reinforced by the Athletic Sports Committee, which ran a variation of the Challenge Cup in 1865–66. With input from other clubs, the rules underwent several minor revisions, establishing a uniform code known as "Victorian rules". In 1866, the "first distinctively Victorian rule", the running bounce, was formalised at a meeting of club delegates chaired by H. C. A. Harrison, an influential pioneer who took up football in 1859 at the invitation of Wills, his cousin.The game around this time was defensive and low-scoring, played low to the ground in congested rugby-style scrimmages. The typical match was a 20-per-side affair, played with a ball that was roughly spherical, and lasted until a team scored two goals. The shape of the playing field was not standardised; matches often took place in rough, tree-spotted public parks, most notably the Richmond Paddock, known colloquially as the Melbourne Football Ground. Wills argued that the turf of cricket fields would benefit from being trampled upon by footballers in winter, and, as early as 1859, football was allowed on the MCG. However, cricket authorities frequently prohibited football on their grounds until the 1870s, when they saw an opportunity to capitalise on the sport's growing popularity. Football gradually adapted to an oval-shaped field, and most grounds in Victoria expanded to accommodate the dual purpose—a situation that continues to this day.
Spread to other colonies
Football became organised in South Australia in 1860 with the formation of the Adelaide Football Club, the oldest football club in Australia outside Victoria. It devised its own rules, and, along with other Adelaide-based clubs, played a variety of codes until 1876, when they uniformly adopted most of the Victorian rules, with South Australian football pioneer Charles Kingston noting their similarity to "the old Adelaide rules". Similarly, Tasmanian clubs quarrelled over different rules until they adopted a slightly modified version of the Victorian game in 1879. The South Australian Football Association, the sport's first governing body, formed on 30 April 1877, firmly establishing Victorian rules as the preferred code in that colony. The Victorian Football Association formed the following month.Clubs began touring the colonies in the late 1870s, and in 1879 the first intercolonial match took place in Melbourne between Victoria and South Australia. In 1883, delegates representing the football associations of South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Queensland met to standardise the code across Australia. New rules such as holding the ball led to a "golden era" of fast, long-kicking and high-marking football in the 1880s, a time which also saw players such as George Coulthard achieve superstardom, as well as the rise of professionalism, particularly in Victoria and Western Australia, where the code took hold during a series of gold rushes. Likewise, when New Zealand experienced a gold rush, the sport arrived with a rapid influx of Australian miners. Now known as Australian rules or Australasian rules, the sport became the first football code to develop mass spectator appeal, attracting world record attendances for sports viewing and gaining a reputation as "the people's game".
Australian rules football reached Queensland and New South Wales as early as 1866; the sport experienced a period of dominance in the former, and in the latter, several regions remain strongholds of Australian rules, such as the Riverina. However, by the late 1880s, rugby football had become the dominant code in both colonies, as well as in New Zealand. This shift was largely due to rugby's spread with British migration, regional rivalries and the lack of strong local governing bodies. In the case of Sydney, denial of access to grounds, the influence of university headmasters from Britain who favoured rugby, and the loss of players to other codes inhibited the game's growth.