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In the first half of the 19th century in Australia, there was very little activity which bore any resemblance to current rugby.
Prior to 1850 there were various pastimes which involved kicking a ball, but none of them took place with any prevailing rules or as part of a structured competition, and most were associated with other festive activities.
It is generally thought that Tom Wills was instrumental in bringing about the establishment of a rugby competition in Melbourne.
Born in New South Wales, Wills was sent to Rugby School in England, where he played rugby for five years before returning to Melbourne in December 1856.
By then rugby was being played in schools in England but usually in accordance with their own version of the rules, with no code by which everybody played. The Rugby School had developed a game with the characteristics of rugby, but Eton, for example, played their rugby in a style similar to what became football.
On his return, Wills set about attracting interest in playing games of rugby and on July 10 1858, he published an open letter, calling on sportsmen who had just finished a season of cricket to form a rugby club, and advocating the establishment of a committee to draw up a code of laws.
Later that year, several games of rugby were played in the parklands around Melbourne. Not surprisingly, the absence of rules made umpiring a challenge, and also probably explained why one of the early matches – between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar – took three consecutive Saturdays without either team scoring the best of three goals to win in accordance with the Rugby School custom. The match was finally declared drawn.
The game quickly grew in popularity, bringing with it increasing urgency in formulating agreed laws for the conduct of games. In what is now regarded as one of the most significant developments in the history of the game, on 14 May 1859 the Melbourne Rugby Club was established and on 17 May 1859, Wills, William Hammersley and Thomas Smith met in a back room of the Parade Hotel in Melbourne to formulate rules.
The meeting had a momentous outcome, with the formulation of what came to be known as “the Melbourne Rules”.
There were several significant innovations in the rules published. Tripping and pushing were still allowed, but hacking was banned, no doubt to the disappointment of rugby adherents who enjoyed the technique. Hacking involved deliberately kicking an opponent in the shins or lower legs, but below the knee and provided the player was running with the ball.
The ball could be taken in hand only when caught from the foot “or on the hop”, and, in what amounted to the greatest divergence from then current practices, the ball while in play could under no circumstances be thrown. Significantly, no provision was made for an offside rule.
The rules did not result in immediate agreement or consistent application. This was due in part to the fact that Wills’ prominence in other sports, such as cricket and athletics, left Victoria for Queensland and did not return until 1864. This saw the game pick up momentum again, including in relation to the clarification of the rules of the game.
Wills, notwithstanding his initiative in promoting a game specific to the colonies, maintained a tendency to seek to preserve rugby practices, which were normally so complex that probably only he understood them. One practice he sought to maintain was the use of a crossbar attached to the goalposts, but he was unsuccessful and four posts were introduced.
In 1866, following a meeting of clubs in Melbourne, another important development took place, with the introduction of the requirement to bounce the ball “every five or six yards”.
The agreement embodied in the Melbourne Rules reflected a uniformity which had not taken place in England. English rugby comprised two groups, one of which was responsible for the formation of the Rugby Association in 1863, and the other preferring a code of rugby which preserved the ancient and venerable art of hacking.
These tardy developments have led to claims of triumph by Australian rugby historians that Australian Rules is older than either of the codes of football or rugby.
The introduction of the Melbourne Rules did not immediately provide a game for all tastes, and agreement as to the appropriate level of vigour was not immediately forthcoming. The eminent Colden Harrison, who later became a pillar of the administration of the game, is renowned for his famous assertion that “rugby is essentially a rough game all over the world and is not suitable for men-poodles and milk sops”.
Despite the rules, players still tripped, punched and kicked each other, charged or jumped on a player who had just taken a mark, or slung their opponent to the ground even if yards from the ball. It took more than a century before some of these practices disappeared.
In any event, the formulation and publication of the Melbourne Rules was undoubtedly the start of what has been a gradual process of 150 years of refinement of the fundamentals of the laws of the game of Australian Rules, which were then put in place.
What is also worthy of note is the subsequent rapid spread of the game of rugby played according to the Melbourne Rules across the south of the country and to the west, with the result that playing Melbourne Rules according to rugby rules never took hold. That was not the case in the colonies to the north.
The game was known as Melbourne Rules for short and Wills dropped any reference to old-school rugby. With the spread of the popularity of the Melbourne Rules, the sport outgrew Melbourne and ventured into a number of Victorian outcrops to become famous as Victorian Rules.
As the game grew and started to be played in other southern colonies, it eventually became known as Australian Rules. The rest is history.
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