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Showing results for tags 'born 160 yrs ago'.
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ON MAY 17, 1859 – 160 years ago – four influential sporting identities gathered in a hotel near the Melbourne Cricket Ground and wrote the first official rules of Australian Football. One of the chief footy law-makers, champion sportsman Tom Wills, had been determined to create "a game of our own", and had helped get the then-oblong ball rolling the previous July by writing a letter that was published in Bell's Life magazine, in which he called for the establishment of a "foot-ball club" to keep cricketers fit in winter. From left, William Hammersley, publican James ‘Jerry’ Bryant (standing), James Thompson, Thomas Smith and Tom Wills (standing). Cartoon by Mark Knight A month later, in August 1858, Wills umpired the first organised match of this distinctly new game between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College, each fielding 40 players and playing with a round ball over an 800-metre stretch of the Richmond Paddock (now Yarra Park). https://www.afl.com.au/news/2019-05-17/the-very-first-football-club-when-the-australian-game-was-born-160-years-ago
