TOM WILLS

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

Contents

Early life

Cricket career

Football

Tragedy and Death

References

External links

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 property in the Ararat District in western Victoria.
Although there is no direct evidence that Wills played Marn Grook, an Aboriginal game similar to modern football codes with members of a nearby tribe as a boy, it appears likely due to his family's extensive interaction with local aborigines 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. At the age of fourteen he was sent to England to attend the famous Rugby School, where he played the game of rugby football.

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.
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).^[2]
The Melbourne Cricket Club, like many institutions of high society, was known to discriminate against the "Convict Stain".^[3][4] An achievement of his advocacy, was his own admission as a high-ranking member of the MCC, despite his convict heritage.

Football

During July 1858, Wills wrote a letter to ''Bell's Life'', a Melbourne-based sporting publication, inviting anyone who might be interested to participate in a football match on the 31st of that month in Richmond, a suburb of Melbourne. Wills participated with one of the first ever matches, an experimental match on Richmond Paddock on 31 July, 1858.
On 7 August of 1858, Wills umpired the first ever organised Australian rules match between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar School on the land which is now home to the Melbourne Cricket Ground. A statue commemorating this event which features Tom Wills umpiring and two players from the match stands at the cricket club members entry of the MCG.
On May 17 1859, Wills chaired the meeting which agreed upon the sport's rules. 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.
Wills continued to be involved in football, both as a player and administrator, well into the 1860s. His time at Rugby had given him a liking for that school's particular brand of football, and in 1865 he was still trying to introduce a rugby-style cross-bar into the sport.

Tragedy and Death

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

References

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External links

★ Australian Dictionary of Biography entry

★ Thomas Wentworth Wills: Cricketer & joint creator of Australian rules football

★ Biography on Full Points Footy

★ http://www.convictcreations.com/football/inventors.htm

★ http://www.footystamps.com/ot_tom_wills.htm

★ Cricinfo article on Tom Wills

★ ABC Radio National 1998 report on Tom Wills