Aussie Rules
Hammersley described Wills as "a model of Muscular Christianity."
Key words
- Rough: dangerous or violent
It's a rough area, don't go there at night.
- In common with: in the same way as someone or something
English food has a lot in common with Australian food.
- Draw up: to prepare something, usually something official, in writing
I've drawn up a list of people that I'd like to interview.
- Governing body: the group of people who are responsible for controlling how a sport, activity, school, or other organization is run
The sport's governing body announced changes to some rules for the coming season.
- Break away: to stop being part of a group because you begin to disagree with the people in the group
Some members of the Conservative Party broke away to create the Reform Party.
Read the article to find the answers
- How many points is a goal worth in AFL?
- What did the early versions of English football have in common with modern Australian Rules?
- Where did Thomas Wentworth Wills go to school?
- When was the AFL formed?
The AFL
The Australian Football League (AFL), also known as Aussie Rules or simply 'footy', is the most exciting, fast-paced version of football. The field is huge and games are played 18-a-side.
When the ball is kicked, the players battle for the ball in the air and if it is caught cleanly by a player from the same team as the kicker, it is called a mark (as you can see in the photo above). The player who marks the ball can then take a shot on goal or kick the ball to a teammate in a better position.
A player can either score a goal, worth six points, or a behind, worth one point. To score a goal, a player must kick the ball between the two centre posts. A behind is scored when a player carries the ball behind the goal line.
English Rules
In the early 1850s, rough and tough miners from England working in Victoria's mines played a wild and chaotic game of football similar to Cambridge Rules and Sheffield Rules. These early versions of football had many aspects in common with modern Australian Rules, notably hand kicking, allowing players to catch the ball with a free kick awarded for a fair catch (mark), carrying the ball in the hand, shoulder charging the player with the ball and kicking through upright goals to score.
Thomas Wentworth Wills
At the age of 14, Thomas Wentworth Wills went to England to attend Rugby School, where he captained the cricket team and played an early version of Rugby Football. On his return to Australia he wrote to the local newspaper to promote the idea of organised football in the colony of Victoria. Two weeks after the letter was published, Wills organised 40-a-side matches with a round ball at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
The game became increasingly popular in and around Melbourne and in 1859 the Melbourne Football Club Rules, the oldest surviving set of rules for Australian Rules Football, were drawn up at a meeting chaired by Wills and widely circulated.
The game grew in popularity throughout the 1860s and by 1877 there were more than 130 clubs in Australia. This led to the formation of the Victorian Football Association (VFA), the first official governing body for Australian football.
Several teams decided to break away from the VFA and form a new body known as the Victorian Football League (VFL). By the late 1980s, the VFL included teams from outside Victoria, such as the West Coast Eagles (from Western Australia) and the Brisbane Bears (from Queensland). The league's administrators wanted to represent all of Australia, not just Victoria, and the VFL became the AFL in 1990.
Discussion questions
- Do you have any questions about any of the vocabulary or grammar in this article?
- What do you think of the fact that the founders of the AFL were muscular Christians?
- What interests you most about Australia?
- Which version of football do you prefer?
- What is your favourite sport?
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