From Wikipedia:
As I understand it, the flick pass was pioneered in the VFA, with Footscray employing it to good effect in the controversial 1924 charity match against Essendon:
Does anyone know of footage of either exists? I found film of the aforementioned 1961 Grand Final, but it's low quality, edited highlights and mostly just Hawthorn goals, so it's hard to tell.
One notable variant of the handpass was known as the flick pass, in which a player could use his open hand instead of his fist to propel the ball. The legality of the flick pass has varied throughout the history of the game; it became legal in the 1930s, and in the late 1950s and early 1960s it had become a common technique to achieve centre square clearances from scrimmages. Owen Abrahams, Wally Clark and Kevin Wright were notable exponents at Victorian Football League (VFL) club Fitzroy. Of the 88 handballs executed during the 1961 VFL Grand Final, 18 were flick passes. By 1966, the flick pass was considered a type of throw by Australian National Football Council (ANFC) rules, and was penalised with a free kick, with players required to use a clenched fist for disposal.
The flick pass had the significant drawback that its action was close to that of a throw, and different umpires had different interpretations of what was legal. In 1938, motivated by a desire to eliminate this inconsistency, and to speed up the game, the Victorian Football Association (VFA) legalised throwing the ball, provided both hands were below shoulder-height. The throw pass was legal in the VFA and in some other competitions affiliated with it from 1938 until 1949, but it was never legal under ANFC rules.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handball_(Australian_rules_football)
As I understand it, the flick pass was pioneered in the VFA, with Footscray employing it to good effect in the controversial 1924 charity match against Essendon:
The feature of the game appears to have been Footscray’s use of handball or flick pass. It was this along with a dominant ruck division that delivered the victory. Footscray’s style of handball was described as ‘attractive as it was illegal.’ Gerald Brosnan of the Sun wrote: ‘Footscray owes its victory largely to its perfected system of handball, which the uninitiated would have no hesitation in labelling throwing’. Both Fitzmaurice and Hardy, too, mentioned Footscray’s handball as troublesome and thus gave tacit support to it being a contributing factor toward Essendon’s loss.
http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/ASSH Bulletins/No 30/ASSHBulletin30d.pdf
Does anyone know of footage of either exists? I found film of the aforementioned 1961 Grand Final, but it's low quality, edited highlights and mostly just Hawthorn goals, so it's hard to tell.