On May 14 1859 the first Australian rules football club was established.

This club wrote the first set of rules for the game, which were later expanded into "Victorian Rules" in 1866 and then into the "Australasian Rules" of 1890.

This Foundation Club was The Melbourne Football Club.

Later in 1859 (18th July) The Geelong Football Club was established.

Tom Wills was influential in establishing both The Geelong and Melbourne Football Clubs.

Perhaps it is time for Melbourne and Geelong to start celebrating their role as the Foundation clubs and play an annual "Foundation Game" at the MCG for the Tom Wills Cup?

To be Played around the time of Toms Wills Public declaration of football when he sent a letter to Bell's Life in Victoria dated July 10 1858 which was to be the founding document of Australian Football and aimed at addressing the fitness of the cricketers during the winter months. A legendary letter, written by a man who was a giant of his time as a footballer and a cricketer, three times football champion of the colony.

Edited May 5, 201510 yr by PaulRB

We tried something along these lines about 10 years ago didn't we, and it didn't really fly? We played them as part of rivalry round and I'm sure there was some sort of 1850s jumper that we wore against them once (not surprisingly we got flogged by them again too from memory!).

Blah blah blah past, blah blah wrote the rules, blah blah done sod all last fifty years, afl won't give us shite until we are actually decent and deserve marquee games.

A set up game of us v cats cos first two clubs won't mean shite unless we are both relevant and playing good football.

If we aren't, it means nothing, no one will care or come because of this cup/game.

I understand the idea you are saying, I'm just sick of being crap and a club that means nothing to the broader afl and we have to resort to the past to try and be relevant.

Win 17 games in a season, not five seasons and all these sort of games will come.

I reckon next year, we'd entertain going toe to toe with Geelong in a Friday night "Foundation Game". Don't need to make a big ra ra about it but just inaugurate the "Tom Wills Cup" have Martin Flanagan write a nice piece about the soul of the game and we can get on with having a go at the Cats on our home turf...

If the Tigers and Blues can hold onto Game 1, despite their performances why not 1 friday night game to celebrate the roots of this game?

Similar low key to the Breast Cancer game with the Doggies that also supports womens football.

Edited May 5, 201510 yr by PaulRB

We tried something along these lines about 10 years ago didn't we, and it didn't really fly? We played them as part of rivalry round and I'm sure there was some sort of 1850s jumper that we wore against them once (not surprisingly we got flogged by them again too from memory!).

That was on the night of the Opening Ceremony in 2008. We lost by 116 points and were down 0-61 and there was a big cheer when we finally scored