Tom Wills

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Tom Wills
Tom Wills the cricketer
Born	August 19, 1835(1835-08-19) Gundagai, New South Wales, Australia
Died	May 3, 1880 (aged 44) Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia
Known for	One of the key inventors of Australian rules football

Thomas Wentworth "Tom" Wills (19 August 1835 – 3 May 1880) was an Australian all-round sportsman who is credited along with his cousin Henry Colden Harrison as one of the inventors of Australian rules football.

1 Early life
2 Time in England
3 Cricket career
4 Football
5 Tragedy and Death
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

[edit] Early life

Wills was born in 1835 near Gundagai, New South Wales^[1] In 1839, he moved with his family, to Lexington, a 125,000-acre (510 km²) property in the Ararat District in western Victoria.

Although there is no direct evidence that Wills played Marn Grook, an Aboriginal game with some similar rules to the first football codes with members of a nearby community as a boy, the connection may have had some influence. He spoke the language of the people with whom he grew up, the Tjapwurrung, knew their dances, and the first games he played were with local Aboriginal children.^[2] Due to his family's extensive interaction with local aborigines, it is assumed that he would have at the very least seen the game being played and some believe this to have an influence on his rules for Australian Football.

[edit] Time in England

At the age of fourteen he was sent to England to attend the famous Rugby School, where he played both rugby football and cricket.

He excelled at both sports. By his final year in England, he was captain of the Rugby XI and he was listed in Bells Sporting Life as being one of the most promising young cricketers in England.

[edit] Cricket career

On his return to Melbourne in 1856 at the age of twenty-one he became one of Victoria's best cricketers, representing the colony in intercolonial cricket matches against New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania.

In 1868, Wills coached the first Australian cricket team to tour England, which was entirely comprised of Indigenous Australians.

Tom Wills with the Aboriginal cricket team which toured England

Wills was the grandson of a man sent to Sydney from England for highway robbery, and this convict heritage had a strong bearing on his life. Wills was a strong advocate for the rights of free settlers and "emancipated convicts" (those who had proven their worth to society).^[3] The Melbourne Cricket Club, like many institutions of high society, was known to discriminate against the "Convict Stain".^[4]^[5] An achievement of his advocacy, was his own admission as a high-ranking member of the MCC, despite his convict heritage.

[edit] Football

Statue of Tom Wills umpiring one of the earliest recorded match of Australian rules football

Further information: Australian rules football - Early years in Victoria

Some historians erroneous;y claim that Wills was instrumental in setting up at least six "football" clubs in Geelong before his famous letter dated 10 July 1858 to Bell's Life (a Melbourne-based sporting publication) in an attempt to stimulate interest in the sport of football. He participated in an early game of football, a "scratch" match that occurred in the Richmond Paddock (now Yarra Park) on 31 July 1858.

On 7 August 1858, Wills was one of the umpires at a match between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar School, also in the Richmond Paddock. Played as a 40 per side contest, the game is claimed by some as the first match of Australian football. A statue commemorating this event which features Wills as umpire was erected at the MCC members' entry of the MCG.

On 17 May 1859, Wills chaired a meeting of the Melbourne Football Club which wrote down the sport's rules for the first time. While Wills was a fan of the rugby rules, his intentions were clear when he is recorded during this meeting to have made the famous declaration "We shall have a game of our own".

During that year, he was also heavily involved in the formation of both the Melbourne and Geelong clubs, both of which he played for and both of which are still in existence today, playing in the Australian Football League. Wills achieved Champion of the Colony status three times, once for Melbourne and twice for Geelong.^[6]

Wills continued his involvement with football as player and administrator into the 1860s. His time at Rugby was influential in his attempt to introduce a rugby-style cross-bar into the sport in 1865.

[edit] Tragedy and Death

Monument and pavilion to Tom Wills in Moyston, Victoria

In 1861 Tom's father Horatio Wills emigrated north to Queensland where they took up a holding at Cullin-La-Ringo in the Nogoa region about two hundred miles from Rockhampton. They had only been on the holding for three weeks when they were attacked by a party of Indigenous Australians who killed nineteen of the group, including Tom's father. Tom was away from the property at the time, having been sent to a neighbouring property, about two days ride away, for supplies.

In his later years, Wills became an alcoholic (which many attribute to the tragic death of his father) and in May 1880 at the age of 44 he stabbed himself to death with a pair of scissors in his Heidelberg home.

In 1998, Wills was honoured by a monument in Moyston, his home town, which includes a pavilion and historical storyboard based on information supplied by historian Colin Hutchison. The storyboard recognises the contribution of Marn Grook to the game of Australian football.

Wills is honoured with a sculpture at the MCG by Louis Laumen erected in 2002. The sculpture reads that Wills:

Did more than any other person - as footballer and umpire, co-writer of the rules and promoter of the game - to develop Australian Football during its first decade.

A room in the Great Southern Stand, known as the Tom Wills Room, reserved for corporate functions is also named after him.

For many years, Wills role in the birth of Australian Football was played down by MCC officials and instead credited most of this to his cousin, H.C.A Harrison, and some believe this to be due Harrison's apparently more wholesome character. As the MCC has become more liberal in its attitudes, and Australians generally embrace convict heritage, Wills contribution has been recognised and acknowledged.