Early History
Australian rules football is unique. It's the only sport in the world in which the ball and the field are both the same shape: oval.
Its origins are both in doubt and in dispute. Some think it evolved from Gaelic football, but the Australian version of the sport appears to be older than the Gaelic version. More likely, it developed from English football and Rugby, possibly with some borrowings from an aboriginal version of football, marngrook, which is played with a ball made of opossum or kangaroo skin.
Thomas Wentworth Wills, considered the father of Australian football, probably played marngrook as a child. In 1849, at the age of 14, he was sent to England to attend the Rugby School, where he starred in both cricket and football. After seven years in England, he returned to his native Australia and joined the Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC). He wrote a letter that appeared in Bell's Sporting Life in July of 1858 proposing that the club organize a football team to help its players keep in shape during the winter. There were several varieties of football being played at the time, so Wills also suggested that a committee should be appointed to lay down rules for the sport.
The need for standardized rules was demonstrated three weeks later when a match, possibly inspired by Wills' letter, was played between Melbourne Grammar School (MGS) and the St. Kilda Club. The match ended in a fight over the rules.
The Melbourne Football Club (MFC), an offshoot of the MCC, was informally organized on Aug. 7, 1858. That very day, probably by coincidence, Wills umpired a match between the MGS and Scotch College that used some form of the Rugby School rules. Played over three weekends, Aug. 7, Aug. 21, and Sept. 4, it ended in a 1-1 tie. A plaque on the Melbourne Cricket Ground memorializes that as the first game of Australian Rules football, which isn't quite accurate, since the Australian Rules hadn't been drawn up yet.
The MFC was formally founded on July 14, 1859. Three days later, Wills chaired a four-member committee to draw up rules. The other committee members were William J. Hammersley, James B. Thompson and Thomas H. Smith. The four eventually worked out a code of ten rules:
I. The distance between the Goals and the Goal Posts shall be decided upon by the Captains of the sides playing.
II. The Captains on each side shall toss for choice of Goal; the side losing the toss has the Kick Off from the centre point between the Goals.
III. A Goal must be kicked fairly between the posts, without touching either of them, or a portion of the person of any player of either side.
IV. The game shall be played in a space of not more than 200 yards wide, the same to be measured equally on each side of a line drawn through the centres of the two Goals; and two posts to be called the 'Kick Off' posts shall be erected at a distance of 20 yards on each side of the Goal posts at both ends, and in a straight line between them.
V. In case the Ball is kicked behind goal, any one of the side behind whose goal it is kicked may bring it 20 yards in front of any portion of the space between the 'Kick Off' posts, and shall kick it as nearly as possible in a line with the opposite Goal.
VI. 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.
VII. Tripping and pushing are both allowed (but no hacking) when any player is in rapid motion or in possession of the Ball, except in the case provided for in Rule VI.
VIII. The Ball shall be taken in hand only when caught from the foot, or on the hop. In no case shall it be lifted from the ground.
IX. When the Ball goes out of bounds (the same being indicated by a row of posts) it shall be brought back to the point where it crossed the boundary line, and thrown in at right angles with that line.
X. The Ball, while in play, may under no circumstances be thrown.
Those are pretty much the rules of Rugby football, as it was played at the time. The only major difference is Rule VIII, which prohibits a player from picking the ball up from the ground, as is permissible in Rugby.
At times, much has been made of Rule VI, since "marking" is now such a distinctive feature of Australian football. At the time, though, it wasn't at all unusual. The Cambridge Rules for football, drawn up in 1863, allowed a free kick if a player made a mark after a fair catch, and Princeton University students in 1869 were playing a version of football which also allowed a free kick after a fair catch. A vestige remains in the little-noted and rarely-used American football rule that a team is allowed a free kick after one of its players makes a fair catch.
It's been suggested that marking was inspired by marngrook. The aboriginal sport consisted almost entirely of kicking, catching, and marking, judging by a description written in 1841: "The tallest men have the best chances in this game. Some of them will leap as high as five feet from the ground to catch the ball. The person who secures the ball kicks it. This continues for hours and the natives never seem to tire of the exercise."
But "high marking," as leaping to catch the ball is called, wasn't an important feature of Australian football in its early years. Under the Melbourne Rules, it was essentially a running sport, like modern Rugby. Kicking was legal but frowned upon for a very simple reason: The ball was made with a pig bladder, easily broken by a strong kick, and there were usually no spares on hand.
About 1880, the rubber bladder began to replace the pig bladder and balls were manufactured in larger quantities, bringing the price down. The new type of ball was less likely to break and was more easily replaced if it it did break, so kicking increased, along with marking.
The "high mark," which requires much the same skills as grabbing a basketball rebound away from competing hands, didn't really become a major feature of Australian football until the early 20th century. Its doubtful that marngrook had any effect on the sport's development at that late date.
From Victoria to the World
In 1866, representatives of the Carlton, Melbourne, Royal Park and South Yarra football clubs drew up a revised version of the Melbourne rules and the sport then became known as Victoria Rules football. One of the additional rules required a player to bounce the ball every 10 meters, another distinctive feature of what is now known as Australian football.
The Victorian Football Association (VFA) was founded in 1877 with 14 member clubs: Albert Park, Ballarat, Barwon, Beechworth, Carlton, Castlemaine, East Melbourne, Essendon, Geelong, Hotham, Inglewood, Melbourne, Rochester and St Kilda.
The South Australian Football Association, now the South Australian National Football League (SANFL), was also established in 1877 and the West Australian Football League (WAFL) was formed in 1885. Both of them played essentially by the Victoria Rules.
Like the MFC, most of the early football teams were organized by established cricket clubs. However, they weren't at first allowed to play on the cricket grounds, so football was banished to outlying areas of uneven, poorly maintained land where gum trees often interfered with play. So did spectators, who often crowded into the playing area to get better views of action.
In 1869, the Melbourne club was given permission to use the cricket grounds for football. Gradually, other teams also began playing on cricket grounds, which are oval (elliptical, to be precise) in shape. By the end of the 1880s, the oval had become the standard Australian football field.
As the VFA grew, many of its newer members were weak teams with limited followings. Some of the stronger, better-established teams became disgruntled at having to share gate receipts with those weaker clubs. The best six teams from the VFA, Collingwood, South Melbourne, Essendon, Melbourne, Fitzroy and Geelong, met on Oct. 2, 1896, to seek a solution to the problem. The first proposal, reorganizing the VFA into two divisions, was rejected and the teams then break away and form a new organization, the Victorian Football League.
St. Kilda and Carlton were also invited to join and the eight-team VFL began playing a regular schedule in 1897. The VFL remained an eight-team league until 1908, when Richmond and University joined.
Nominally, VFL players were amateurs, but many of them were actually paid under the table. In 1911, the league officially approved professionalism, setting a limit of 30 shillings per match. However, Melbourne and University both opposed the idea and refused to pay players. As a result, neither team was competitive. After the 1914 season, University merged into the Melbourne club. But Melbourne didn't field a team in 1916 or 1917, ostensibly because of World War I but largely as a protest against professionalism.
After the war, though, even the Melbourne club began to pay some players. By then, the VFL had become recognized as Australia's elite football league, with the SANFL and WAFL somewhat behind and the other leagues, such as the VFA, even further back. The best players naturally gravitated to the VFL because the money was there.
The VFL also led the way in adopting new rules, with the FVA and other leagues lagging a year or more behind. In the league's very first seson, the VFL did away with the so-called "little mark rule," which allowed a player to touch the ball with his foot and then hand it to a teammate for a mark. In its third season, 1899, the league opened up play considerably by reducing the number of players from 20 to 18.
The VFL grew to 12 teams in 1924, with the addition of Footscray, Hawthorn, and North Melbourne. All 12 teams were based in Victoria until 1982, when the South Melbourne club was in serious financial trouble. The league decided to move the team to Sydney, the capital of New South Wales. After that, changes arrived quickly. Two other teams from outside Victoria, the Brisbane Bears and the West Coast Eagles, joined the VFL in 1987.
In 1990, the VFL changed its name to the Australian Football League (AFL), reflecting the fact that it had teams from beyond Victoria. The Adelaide Crows joined the AFL in 1991, giving the league representation in each of Australia's five mainland states and the Fremantle Dockers were added in 1995. After the 1996 season, Fitzroy merged into Brisbane and Port Adelaide entered the AFL, creating the present 16-club alignment.
The AFL's regular season runs from late March through August. The league is split into two divisions, with the top eight teams from the previous season in one division and the bottom eight in the other. A team plays 22 games, two against each other team in its division and one against each team in the other division. Most games are played on Friday nights and weekends, with occasional Monday night contests.
The top eight teams in the standings are then seeded according to their finishes. That's known as the Premiership Ladder ("premiership" meaning "championship"). Most of September is taken up with the playoffs, culminating in the AFL championship game.
There's much more to Australian football than the AFL, though. Victoria alone has nearly 2,000 teams in more than 100 leagues. Each of the other five mainland states has its own league, as do Tasmania and the Northern Territory.
The sport has also spread beyond Australia. The International Australian Football Council was founded in 1995 with the goal of establishing a world championship event. The first Australian Football International Cup was held in Melbourne in August 2002. Eleven countries competed: Canada, Denmark, Great Britain, Ireland, Japan, Nauru, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, South Africa, and the United States. Ireland defeated Papua New Guinea to win the championship.
The next International Cup tournament will be held in August of 2005.