AFL is not indigenous but uniquely Australian

No, that's a forced argument indeed. If what you say were true, nothing at all would ever be invented, it would just be a rearrangement of existing knowledge. It would be true to say that the concept of football was not invented in Australia, but Australian Rules Football was certainly invented here. That's enough to make it the indigenous game.

The issue as to whether you can call Aussie Rules an indigenous game of Australia is really subjective.AFL fans will naturally want to spin any interpretation in their favour. As a neutral who follows all sports,I would refer to my intellectual property background.If you look at copyright it would be clear beyond any doubt that an adaption of a substantial part of the original british rules would have been taken as a template for Aussie Rules.If you looked at it from a patent perspective,you need to have an inventive step and novelty to patent a new idea.Again i struggle to see anything about Aussie Rules as first adopted that would qualify. Therefore like all the football codes here Aussie rules cannot legitimately call itself indigenous.It's and adaptation of a british game.It is not original and the differences between it and british games of the time were not significant enough to qualify it as a truly indegenous game. From what I can see Aussie Rules is no more Australian than Pavlova or meat pies.It's just no one else overseas cares enough to take an issue with it.(except maybe a few kiwis.:))

Australian Football has its appeal to some when they finally get to see it. Some comments by Paul Nicholson, former Yorkshireman darts player now playing for Australia: "Once you've watched Aussie Rules football, where they batter each other, dust themselves down and just get on with it, it's hard to come back over here and be impressed by pansies and ballet dancers prancing around in the Premier League." Read more: http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/more-sport/darts/2010/11/13/grand-slam-of-darts-paul-nicholson-a-fair-dinkum-geordie-115875-22713969/#ixzz15CNhJMCL

The dilemma about a lot of this is just what CAN anyone really claim. I've seen Rugby people claiming Melbourne Rules as their own. I've seen Soccer folk pushing the point that Melbourne folk observed upon seeing the London FA rules of 1863 that the Londoners had almost copied the Melbourne rules - - so, was Melbourne Rules Rugby, or soccer? Of course it was niether....(and yet it was both???). Adelaide and a game in 1843 or any games prior to an agreed upon set of rules would've been most akin to 'folk football' simply because, unless you had a whole bunch of old Etonians, or old Rugbeans then......you'd struggle to draw a crowd large enough and get anything like agreement on the rules. So, whilst that game or games would, if played to their conclusion - would by logical conclusion have to have been played via some agreed upon 'playing conditions' on the day. Otherwise, like most games of the era - would've resulted in fisticuffs. FYI - Adelaide founded 1836, as a British colony, and Colonel Light had already surveyed and planned the city. By 1841 they already had built the governor's house, Adelaide Gaol, police barracks, hospital, customs house and a wharf at Port Adelaide. And generated a fair debt in doing it!!

My Croweater cuzzin says its true and when I said he was talking rubbish he came back with that SANFL page to prove it. I didn't think Adelaide was even started as a city until the 1870s or something because they were all German migrants and not convicts. So you would have to think that the Melbourne game must have been influenced more by an older Australian code than one from England. Makes sense if Adelaide was ahead of Melbourne as a city.

Footy in Sth Aust, 1843,.....gotta be just 'Parndo'.

Yes, i have heard that as well, Croweaters have long claimed Australian football was formed in South Australia, good to see you are taking an interest and even learning about Australian football.

Stop searching. Here's the answer. Footy is not an English game. It's not even a Melboure game. It's a South Australian game! "Football in South Australia has a long and colourful history. The first official record of Australian Rules being played in SA dates back to 1843." http://www.sanfl.com.au/the_sanfl/history_of_the_sanfl/

Mr Football, Wills also spent four years at Rugby School and captained their football team. Yes AFL was formed in Melbourne but to deny that the English public school games had a huge influence on the game is pure ignorance.

Whoa Comparing the RLIF to the ICC. There's your first mistake. Ask any pom or kiwi who runs international rugby league. The ARL and the RLIF are joined at the hip. Kangaroos against England rhis week and there is a NRL referee appointed. There are only two pro legaue competitions in the world and the Australian one has been the most dominant. All the rule changes come from that. The NRL comes up with a change and the RLIF rubber stamps it.The rule chnages don't come from some little club in Taranaki or Wakefield. The RLIF doesn't even have an office or staff. It is just a committee that meets when the NRL says so.

or by unstated inference, you don't leave much room to move. Perhaps some people will seek to be offended no matter what. Because, take a look at how the FFA is pushing the WC bid and opening up scope for accusations of 'un-Australian' to anyone who questions it. They're using ALL the iconology to push it. The position of most of us here I reckon around Australian Football is that it obviously has British influences, however, it IS a unique game to this country, and it's origins include a shared family tree with soccer and rugby, but that it's origins include a cultural progression right from the outset that was unique to it's location. That we often see NRL fans pushing a strange line of parallels with the AFL is astounding. Not the author talks about the NRL and it's ability to dictate to a degree - - yep, but, they are still an off shoot of Rugby that is barely discernable that came along 50 years after Australian Football kicked off and whilst the NRL like any league can have local variations - for internationals, the international body has to agree. The RLIF still has to give it's okay. Now, if at any time that is majority Australians is akin to suggesting that an Australian head of the ICC makes that an Australian organisation. Clearly not. The authors references to the ARU are odd, as the peak competition in Australia is a tri-nations competition. So, got nothing to do with 'un-Australian' to NOT follow or love the AFL and Australian Football, but, there's a bit of try hard 'me tooism' going on which just becomes plain annoying after a while.

Dont know whether it was bigger than rugby, but i do understand that it was bought over from Australia by miners from the goldfields of Victoria, the same way Australian football was bought to WA. "Miners were attracted from the Central Otago Gold Rush, and from Victoria, Australia where the Victorian Gold Rush had nearly finished" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Gold_Rush Backs up my theory IMO that the Victorian goldfieds were very important in the formation of Australian football, Wills and Harrison spent some time there and i would not be suprised if many different kinds of folk football was being played, and being a sportsman he would have taken note. Many Australian, Irish, American, English, Scottish, Welsh, etc on the goldfields mixing socially etc, for those days quite a melting pot.

We need Mr Football and friends over at http://www.theroar.com.au/2010/10/20/storm-and-rebels-going-head-to-head/comment-page-2/ to give us some references confirming AR was bigger than rugby in NZ in the 1800s.

I've learned a lot through reading some of the posts on this blog. It's absolutely terrific to know, not only is Australian Football the oldest of the codes of football currently followed in the world, not only is it a game invented and codified here in Australia, but it is also a fantastic game, incorporating enormous athleticism, fine ball skills, 360 degree spacial awreness, nimbleness of foot, dexterity of hand and fast decisive decision making. Somehow, in one game, those early Australians managed to come up with a game which incorporates the best elements of a number of other sports. I went to a number of finals matches this year at the MCG and I must the say the atmosphere throughout was fantastic. The game is in good hands. Good on the AFL for the work they are doing to make the joy of Australian Football available to more and more people. Good on 'em.

Not when you're selling it either directly or by unstated inference as being unAustralian if you choose not to support it, or unAustralian if you speak against it. The message from AFL cheerleaders never comes with the disclaimer you have provided in your post above. That only comes out when you are challenged on the point. People aren't going to follow or adopt AFL because it is Australian any more than they would buy Danni Minoque cds on the same logic.

No more and no less - whilst the finer points of that could be debated, however, let's just agree that that's the case. Again though, as I've said previously, Australian Football is Australia's OWN game. It's not our ONLY game nor the ONLY game played. What it does do is wholey represents Australia but that's not saying it represents Australia wholey. A bit like the Sydney Harbour bridge. It's a whole lot of semantics.

No body has said there wasn't 'british' influence. Of course there was.

yeah i know, Soccer mums are just a myth !!.

Yeah I know, Aussie Rules is a massive part of our culture up here in NSW, come midnight you can hardly find anyone on the streets because they are all at home watching Richmond vs Fremantle or whoever is playing. Soccer isn't really part of our culture, we just all play it because our mums made us. Up there Cazaly cobber!

Didn't mean to post it twice. I did not say no-one within the game upheld Australian values ( I have many good friends who have played the game and I have helped coach juniors to tackle), but the game as a whole certainly has not shown two very important values that I have always understood as Australian. 1) Humility (the lack of this is seen everywhere in the game from self big noting from players to the AFLs attitudes towards other sports and its shoving of the idea that AFL made Australia and certainly on here 2) Respect for the opposition (the opposite shown during the International Rules a few years back when I was trying to give the game a go and the pathetic punching of the injured hand of an opponent, puching your supposed team mate when he is on the ground at training, several blokes taking pot shots at an injured man by shouldering him when he has a dislocated shoulder etc etc etc). These and many other un-Australian things from a sporting values perspective happened in a very short time amongst just a few games/sports news programmes that I happened to watch (and I didn't watch much and even less now). Yes I have seen many unsavoury incidents in many sports, but nothing compared to these acts of weakness that were applauded ( the punching on the ground incident was generally condemned, but liitle done about it) as manly by the majority of the AFL and AFL fans/media who then want to pour derision on two big fit blokes going toe to toe in the heat of battle. So big headedness and attacking an injured opponent off the ball do not sit with me well. If a bloke is injured and he plays on and is invloved in an actual play, then bad luck. But attacking injuries off the ball is pathetic and un-Australian. These are the values I speak of. The game is doing great things in Aboriginal communities and with troubled kids generally and this needs to be recognised by the anti sport mob out there.