The AFL season reaches its pinnacle on the fabled last Saturday in September.
The date for 2019 is the 28th of the month - as it turns out, also the day the regional city of Queanbeyan, NSW, turns 181.
That's significant for a few reasons.
Firstly, Queanbeyan can lay claim to some, at the least, reflected glory when it comes to both teams in the Final: the Greater Western Sydney Giants and the Richmond Tigers.
GWS, in its very first premiership attempt, is the closest thing the Canberra region has to its own team, with a number of promising young locals playing under the Club's banner.
The Richmond connection is more historic.
The Queanbeyan Tigers – one of the original clubs in the area (1925) – owe their moniker (and their uniform, literally) to that other gold-and-black team.
Apparently, the local Tiges are also linked with Canberra-boy and Richmond conscript, Ivan Soldo. This is said to involve the sourcing of a pair of size 17 boots (he's 6-foot-8!) for the ruckman when he trained with Queanbeyan on first taking up the game in 2014.
[For more on all this, see http://tigersclub.com.au/footballclub/2019-afl-grand-final-tigers-connection/].
And - perhaps, most significantly - the man responsible for this most parochial of sports had his origins in the Queanbeyan district.
Thomas Wentworth Wills, a name not necessarily immediately recognisable, even though, among his considerable accomplishments, he's referred to as the “father of AFL”.
Wills was also an outstanding rugby player and one of this country's greatest cricketers: a celebrity sportsman before the age of such notions, an innovator of the modern form of that English game. And he was the coach and sometime captain of the Aboriginal XI team – the first Australian cricket side ever to tour England (1868).
As is so often the way with tales that border on the legendary, various misinterpretations and myths arise.
While it's bandied about that Wills was born in Gundagai, Captains Flat or on the “Molonglo Plain”, author and psychiatrist Greg de Moore, in his book, First Wild Man of Australian Sport, holds that it was on the “Molonglo River” at his father's property Burra. This wasn't the rural area outside Queanbeyan as it's known today, but a landholding on the Sydney-side of the city, near the property Foxlow, located along the road to the hamlet, Captains Flat.
Even Will's date of birth is still debated, some sources suggesting it was December 19, 1835, others that it was in 1836. Dr de Moore clarifies: “Tom Wills was born on 19 August 1835, on a sheep run on the Molonglo River, 180 miles south-west of Sydney. The first child of Elizabeth and Horatio, Tom lived his first four years on the plains next to the river.”
Therefore, while Victorians may well be mad about AFL, that makes its creator a New South Welshman.
His paternal grandfather had been transported to the antipodes for highway robbery, receiving a pardon in 1803 before earning a fortune as a merchant. Wills' dynamic father would add substantially to the family's coffers, becoming an influential pastoralist and newspaper editor before turning to politics. His death, however, in terrible circumstances, would both inspire and impact his son heavily in later years.
In 1840, Horatio moved with his family from Burra to Ararat in Western Victoria. One of the few European families to take up residence in the area, young Tommy's first friends were the local Aboriginal children of the men employed by his father.
Then, at the age of 14, the boy was sent to England to attend that country's most prestigious educational facility, the Rugby School.
Wills' sporting prowess was quickly evident, and along with dominating on the rugby field, within two years he was captain of the school's First XI. Soon after, he made his debut on the hallowed turf of Lord's Cricket Ground. Astonishingly, he took a dozen wickets.
On his triumphant return to Melbourne in 1856, the strapping young sportsman was considered “one of the most promising cricketers in the kingdom”. He also brought with him the English idea of cricket in the summer and rugby in the winter. Eventually though, he declared the latter pursuit unsuitable for the harsher Australian conditions and grounds.
Wills subsequently set his mind to the creation of a new, distinctly localised sporting pursuit.
On an autumn afternoon in 1859, in a Melbourne pub, with three similarly inclined brethren (one of whom, his cousin), the first 10 rules that would come to be adopted as the laws of Australian Football were drafted. Wills was 23 at the time.
He's credited with having introduced the now conventional oval-shaped ball and concepts such as the free kick for “marking” or catching the ball. (When it comes to cricket, he's also acknowledged as having introduced, in Victoria in 1858, the concept of tossing a coin to determine which side should bat first, rather than the polite convention of “allowing the visiting team first use of the wicket”).
The vigorous game set to vie for the title as Australia's national sport quickly caught on.
As clubs were established, Wills would play for many, and was first captain of the Melbourne Club. His cricketing career also continued unabated, captaining Victoria to victory in the first intercolonial game against NSW (1858).
Then at the height of his popularity, on pain of disinheritance, he accompanied his father for an ill-fated sojourn to the Queensland outback to establish yet another property. The year was 1861, and the pair arrived in company with 20-odd others in the midst of a land war with local Aborigines.
Horatio, having always claimed to have good relations with the traditional inhabitants of the continent, refused to carry guns. At some level though, he must have recognised the escalating tensions for he sent Tom and another boy on an errand that took them three days. On their return, they were confronted with the graves of 19 of the Europeans, marking the largest tragedy of its kind in Australian history.
Retribution was swift and severe, with some accounts suggesting three times as many Aborigines were killed as a result. Tom however, refused to participate.
Despite the trauma – and evidence presented in Dr de Moore's book suggests Wills did suffer Post Traumatic Stress Disorder following the incident – on his later return to Melbourne, the still young man was to become involved with the Aboriginal cricket team.
On the occasion of their inaugural game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Boxing Day, 1866, at which point Wills was captain and coach, 10,000 Victorians lined the streets to welcome them.
They weren't the victors on that occasion, though were said to have “won the hearts of spectators”. When less than two years later they were to make their “marathon” tour of England, Wills was not among them.
[NB: The cricketers played their first match on May 25, 1868, their last appearance on October 17. During this time, they “were in the field on 99 days out of a possible 126”. They would play 47 matches in 40 centres over 15 counties. They won 14, lost the same number and drew 19. In 1951, the team was commemorated in Edenhope, Victoria, with the unveiling of a monument in the school grounds, once the lake foreshore where “the team practiced under Wills”.
Their sporting achievements have more recently been marked in other ways https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_cricket_team_in_England_in_1868].
Perhaps beginning a trend that continues to echo down the generations, controversy hounded the sports star, Wills.
Critics were of the opinion he moulded his chosen sports to best suit his talents: the first cricketer to bowl over-arm instead of “round-arm” as was accepted practice; and supplanting the round ball in AFL because it enhanced his kicking ability.
There were other transgressions too, from brawling and gambling, drinking heavily and associating with “undesirables”. For many of his peers and contemporaries, this included his relationship - but not marriage - to the working-class Sarah Barbor.
His "wild and reckless nature" seem to indicate a determined downward spiral.
Wills' gruesome end only added further to the legend and the intrigue.
Having renounced alcohol, in 1880, he was admitted to Melbourne Hospital. “Wild-eyed” and “demented”, he was experiencing Delirium Tremens, or the DT's, the effects of withdrawal.
Shaking and suffering hallucinations, for Wills it must have seemed as if all of his demons had finally taken hold of his shirt-tails. Making his escape from the facility, he soon after ended his own life, although apparently not quickly, stabbing himself in the heart with a pair of nail scissors. He was 44 years old.
Although the story is already larger-than-life, many other tales have circulated including that he brought Aboriginal AFL and cricket teams to the Queanbeyan-Canberra area to play (he didn't).
Some of the more unfortunate but verified details are that at the time of his death, Wills was destitute and buried in an unmarked in Heidleberg, his parents declared unknown and his common-law-wife never acknowledged by his family.
On the centenary of his death, the Melbourne Cricket Club erected a tombstone in his honour.
Potentially however, the most intriguing legacy of Thomas Wentworth Wills is the enduring debate surrounding the actual beginnings of AFL.
Some suggest it was descended from Gaelic football (the Irish game actually came after), while others believe it had Aboriginal origins.
Certainly Wills was well-known for his life-long association with Aboriginal people and knowledge of their culture. He spoke Tjapwurrung and spent most of his youth engaged with them. It was his own brother who claimed that when Wills was a boy “he played Aboriginal football … they used a possum skin stuffed with charcoal and wrapped with sinew”.
Wills himself though, would never give any indication this was his source of inspiration.
The sportsman's legend continues to resonate in the region he took his first steps, and slowly more are becoming aware of the connection. In 2014, on the 179th anniversary of his birth, the occasion was even marked at Captains Flat.
Tom Wills, easily a figure as iconic as Ned Kelly and Don Bradman – and quite possibly a melding of both - was certainly a uniquely Australian character, one instrumental in bringing into being a unique game which has become a national passion.
SOURCES:
* Tom Wills by Greg de Moore, 2011, Allen & Unwin.
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