Australian Football-150 Years website

[HitEmHardFreo]

THE AFL is beginning to ramp up publicity of the game's 150th year.
A site's been created for grassroots clubs to register their involvement in official celebrations:
http://150years.com.au/

That aside, how would your local club celebrate 150 years of the game?

Mine would be
1: Install hot water showers, FFS!

[PavLike]

The water girl is cute

[whelan=legend]

**** off, AFL was made 18 years ago not 150.

Its only MelbourneFC's 150th year, i knew they would try and take it away from us.

Seriously how can they have massive 100 year celebrations in 1996 and try do 150 in 2008?

[Lehmo87]

Originally Posted by whelan=legend

**** off, AFL was made 18 years ago not 150.

Its only MelbourneFC's 150th year, i knew they would try and take it away from us.

Seriously how can they have massive 100 year celebrations in 1996 and try do 150 in 2008?

It's a little thing called money. although, I completely agree with you; it's only 150 years for two clubs (if you wanna include Geelong) and the AFL are trying to milk as much money as possible from anywhere they can get it.

[finders]

Originally Posted by whelan=legend

**** off, AFL was made 18 years ago not 150.

Its only MelbourneFC's 150th year, i knew they would try and take it away from us.

Seriously how can they have massive 100 year celebrations in 1996 and try do 150 in 2008?

Get your history pight before you make yourself look silly.

Its 150 years since one of the first games was played of what is now called Australian Football(check the website) was played MFC and Geelong were formed after that event!

[finders]

Originally Posted by whelan=legend

**** off, AFL was made 18 years ago not 150.

Its only MelbourneFC's 150th year, i knew they would try and take it away from us.

Seriously how can they have massive 100 year celebrations in 1996 and try do 150 in 2008?

Get your history pight before you make yourself look silly.

Its 150 years since one of the first games was played of what is now called Australian Football (check the website) was played MFC and Geelong were formed after that event!

The 100 years in 1996 was the VFL/AFL the the first official comp the VFA was formed well before that in May 1877.

[whelan=legend]

Originally Posted by finders

Get your history pight before you make yourself look silly.

Its 150 years since one of the first games was played of what is now called Australian Football(check the website) was played MFC and Geelong were formed after that event!

That game was barely Aussie Rules, it was more a variation of rugby.

When Melbourne FC was made our president actually wrote the first set of rules and from then on it is Australian football as we know today.

BTW Geelong was created in 1859 so their 150 is next year.

[BuffaloClub]

We shouldn't argue amongst ourselves about petty details, we should be supporting the education of people re the antiquity of our game, given that some Aussie Rules clubs, even in WA and SA, are older than the oldest English and European soccer clubs. Especially when people like Gus Hiddink (ex-socceroo coach) come over here and say it's silly to 'invent' new games, referring to footy, and revealing his ignorance and arrogance which is common among many people, even a lot of Aussies.

[The Flash]

Originally Posted by finders

Get your history pight before you make yourself look silly.

Its 150 years since one of the first games was played of what is now called Australian Football (check the website) was played MFC and Geelong were formed after that event!

The 100 years in 1996 was the VFL/AFL the the first official comp the VFA was formed well before that in May 1877.

Get your history right tool!
Melbourne played Sth Yarra 2 weeks after the first ever game, which was in September 1858. So therefore we are 150 this year. Geelong first played in 1859, hence making them 149 years this year.
And whelan=legend is right, the MFC wrote the first rules and regulations for our game.

[The Fireman]

http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/showthread.php?t=414602

[The Frederick]

Originally Posted by BuffaloClub

We shouldn't argue amongst ourselves about petty details, we should be supporting the education of people re the antiquity of our game, given that some Aussie Rules clubs, even in WA and SA, are older than the oldest English and European soccer clubs. Especially when people like Gus Hiddink (ex-socceroo coach) come over here and say it's silly to 'invent' new games, referring to footy, and revealing his ignorance and arrogance which is common among many people, even a lot of Aussies.

No recorded Australian football club existed before the first association football club (Sheffield FC). There were six Geelong-area clubs, but if you call what they played "Australian rules", then Calcio Fiorentino teams can be called football (soccer) clubs.

[finders]

Originally Posted by The Flash

Get your history right tool!
Melbourne played Sth Yarra 2 weeks after the first ever game, which was in September 1858. So therefore we are 150 this year. Geelong first played in 1859, hence making them 149 years this year.
And whelan=legend is right, the MFC wrote the first rules and regulations for our game.

http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/41738/...all/index.html

We will begin however, at the commonly accepted starting point, the year 1858.

At this time new headmasters from Great Britain were hoping to introduce "manly" games to their students.3 Dr John E. Bromby, educated at Cambridge and the head master at Melbourne Church of England Grammar Sc hool joined forces with William C. Northcott at St. Kilda Grammar School. Together they agreed their schools should play a match of football at the beginning of the Winter of 1858. This is the earliest football game on record between two Victorian schools or clubs. St. Kilda Grammar won the match.

Two months later Melbourne Church of England Grammar agreed to play Scotch College, news of the proposed match appeared in the newspaper.4 The game began on Saturday , 7 August 1858 at 12 o'clock, it ran for around five hours, both teams scored a goal so they played again two Saturdays later, neither could score. A fortnight later they played again and again no score. The match was declared a draw and that was the e nd of the first football season.5 1
1858 is also the year that Tom Wills's letter was published in Bell's life in Victoria calling for an organized sport.

"Sir - now that cricket has been put aside for some months to come, and cricketers have assumed somewhat of the chrysalis nature (for a time only 'tis sure), but at length will burst forth in all their varied hues, rather than allow this state of torpo r to creep over them, and stifle their now supple limbs, why can not, I say, form a foot-ball club, and form a committee of three or more to draw up a code of laws ?......" 6

Within three weeks of this letter being published, an article in the same newspaper announced that a James Bryant, the publican of Bryant's Parade Hotel in Richmond would provide a ball so a game could be played in Richmond Park that has since been not iced, was conveniently close to the hotel.7

These events are the documented evidence of the beginning of organised football in Victoria. Yet it should be noted that the fact the above letter could be published, a subsequent match organized, and an interschool game completed means that they were not the first 'games of football' played in Victoria.8



Rules
Football was not a new form of entertainment, but up until this point written rules had not been necessary. Rules only become necessary when those playing a game have different perceptions on how the game is played. As clubs became established outsi de the Melbourne area they formed their own set of rules, however they would not have been too dissimilar to the Melbourne Football Club rules.

Melbourne Football Club rules were set down at the Parade Hotel in Wellington Parade, East Melbourne on Tuesday, 17 May 1859. They were developed from the first season of football and the knowledge of T.H. Wills, W.J.Hammersley, H.C.A.Harrison and J. B.Thompson - all founding fathers of the game. Thompson then moved to the Bendigo goldfields, where he became secretary and captain of its first football club - Sandhurst, formed in 1861. Ballarat had a senior football club by 1 862. Tom Wills family's estate was near Geelong, he played a major role in the establishment of the Geelong Football Club in 1859. While these teams rules were similar it soon became clear that when the different areas played each other common rules we re necessary.9

May 8, 1866, football saw the first codification of it's rules by Harrison, Wills, Hammersley and Thompson at the Freemason's Hotel in Swanston Street, Melbourne. The rules have been changed, adapted and interpreted constantly from this point on.



The scratch match that took place on Saturday 31 July 1858 would bear little resemblance to a football match played in 1996. There were around forty men to each side; it was played in a paddock with trees as goal posts; with no boundary lines or poin t posts; neither informal umpires nor written rules