Why is it called a "mark"?

[strategy]

just like obscura ( post 2 ) stated .
When players played in the past they wore a cap.When they caught the ball the ump would yell out MARK on which the player would take off his cap and place it on the ground on where he took the catch .The player would then proceed to dispose of the ball and then pick up his hat and play on.
Some players that didnt have caps / hats used a cloth to " mark " the spot.

Hence the name " Mark " re catching a footy.

 

[Subprime]

^^^
Not saying he did, but you are if you think that Marn Grook had an influence on Melbourne rules. after all, that was all Marn Grook was about.

There was not much to it.

Sheffield Rules had no Offside rule. That would be incorporated in 1863, 6 years after it was first played.

How does that work???

No..........It just common sense that the game was British origins. It evolved into the Rules that are unique to the world, but at the start, it was very much like Australia; British. It is called realism.

Marngrook had no offside rules either and there is a fair chance at least one of the original rulemakers saw it and maybe played it. Marngrook was played in places close to Melbourne too and some people recorded it.

There is certainly no evidence that any of original commitee were in Sheffield in 1857, so none of them saw or played Sheffield Rules. But you reckon that Sheffield Rules are somehow a possible influence while Marngrook is a fantasy, sorry I can't see your logic there.

From the earliest days the game was conceived as a "game of our own", why would that phrase be used if the pioneers considered themselves as British?

 

[Philth]

The term used originally was Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, although as the game became a quicker, much more frenetically paced affair it was sensibly shortened to the more practical adaptation we all use today: mark.

They should have shortened it to Funky. "What a grab, that must be a contendor for funky of the year by Brown"

I always thought it was named for the mark the player made on the turf where they caught the ball.....didn't know about the indigenous theory, interesting thread!

 

[PumpyChowdown]

"The rules of the Melbourne Football Club - May, 1859."

6. Any player catching the ball "directly" from the foot may call "mark". He then has a free kick; no player from the opposite side being allowed to come "inside" the spot marked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_rules#Melbourne_Rules_of_1859

 

[Subprime]

"The rules of the Melbourne Football Club - May, 1859."

6. Any player catching the ball "directly" from the foot may call "mark". He then has a free kick; no player from the opposite side being allowed to come "inside" the spot marked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_rules#Melbourne_Rules_of_1859

Here's a few rules from Rugby of the same era that don't use the term "mark" in the same way:

3. FAIR CATCH is a catch direct from the foot, or a knock on from the hand of the opposite side.
10. A catch from a throw is not a Fair Catch.
11. KNOCKING ON, as distinguished from throwing on, is altogether disallowed under any circumstances whatsoever. In case of this rule broken, a catch from such a knock on, shall be equivalent to a fair catch.
12. If however the ball be hit by the arm, and not by the hand, the catch from such a knock on, shall not be considered equivalent to a fair catch.
15. In a scrimmage succeeding a maul, it is not lawful to touch the ball with the hand, except in the event of a Fair Catch.

 

[Fire]

Once again, marking the ground is not the same as catching a ball.

Completely different in fact.

You keep banging on about this as if its relevant.

God help you if you can't see how one could evolve into another.

 

[jpdixon]

Here's a few rules from Rugby of the same era that don't use the term "mark" in the same way:

3. FAIR CATCH is a catch direct from the foot, or a knock on from the hand of the opposite side....

Actually, the wording is fairly similar. On speaks of catching the ball and calling mark, one of taking a fair catch and making your mark. They both are quite likely to come from similar origins, and our current use of the word makes sense derived from either.

The big red herring here is the focus on 'rugby' or various sets of rules. The thing is that when the Melbourne Rules were written, 'football' was played in England, Australia and elsewhere with different rules in virtually every game, certainly different ones at each school and town. Sorta like choosing which backyard cricket rules (tip-and-run, electric wicky, ...) apply before you start - the same game being played, but not completely the same every time.

Here and there, people came up with standardised rules. When this happened in Melbourne, it started a code (which means a ser of rules) which stayed independent of later similar events in England which led to the rugbies and soccer. This is what makes it Australian, whether their choices were influenced by Aboriginal games or not.

 

[desmond23]

Quote:
"The men and boys joyfully assemble when this game is to be played. One makes a ball of possum skin, somewhat elastic, but firm and strong. The players of this game do not throw the ball as a white man might do, but drop it and at the same time kicks it with his foot. The tallest men have the best chances in this game. Some of them will leap as high as five feet from the ground to catch the ball. The person who secures the ball kicks it. This continues for hours and the natives never seem to tire of the exercise."

- Mr. Thomas, Aboriginal Protector, 1841.

stop having a crack at Mr Thomas you rasist bobby morri

 

[Monkey King]

Marngrook had no offside rules either and there is a fair chance at least one of the original rulemakers saw it and maybe played it.

Rugby had goals and tackles and at least one of the original rule makers definitely saw it and definitely played it for nearly 5 years.

 

[Subprime]

Rugby had goals and tackles and at least one of the original rule makers definitely saw it and definitely played it for nearly 5 years.

I'm not denying any of that.

 

[Chaz Pendlebury]

Actually, the wording is fairly similar. On speaks of catching the ball and calling mark, one of taking a fair catch and making your mark. They both are quite likely to come from similar origins, and our current use of the word makes sense derived from either.

The big red herring here is the focus on 'rugby' or various sets of rules. The thing is that when the Melbourne Rules were written, 'football' was played in England, Australia and elsewhere with different rules in virtually every game, certainly different ones at each school and town. Sorta like choosing which backyard cricket rules (tip-and-run, electric wicky, ...) apply before you start - the same game being played, but not completely the same every time.

Here and there, people came up with standardised rules. When this happened in Melbourne, it started a code (which means a ser of rules) which stayed independent of later similar events in England which led to the rugbies and soccer. This is what makes it Australian, whether their choices were influenced by Aboriginal games or not.

Very good post this.

Clearly the concept of "Football" began flourishing at the posh end of English society in the middle of the 19th century. The idea of playing a football game in winter in Melbourne was obviously heavily influenced by this.

1.There were umpteen number of "codes" at the time where there was little enduring definition on rules etc. The games where barely incubating.
2.The initial rules made it differentiated from other major "codes" at the time in atleast a couple of significant ways .
3. The game evolved from that point and in the latter parts of the 19th century was as deeply defined and established as any of the other codes

Saying Australian football isn't Australian is like saying karate isn't japanese because it evolved from martial arts introduced from chinese monks. Worst than that actually as what the monks introduced were refined disciplines, and only a small minority of the original australian footballers had played one of the "british" codes

Some B-grade revisionist historian League-head has developed some flimsy theory and then clumsily shoe horned selective quotes and accounts to support it. This appears to have a got a few people envious of the size and originality of our game excited

 

[gbatman]

A catch is where you "catch" the ball and you don't recieve a free for doing so for example from a handpass, kick under 15 meters, from a spoil, off hands etc. A mark is where your "catch" the ball from a kick over 15 meters without anything else making cantact with tha ball.

 

[BobbyMorri]

Marngrook had no offside rules either and there is a fair chance at least one of the original rulemakers saw it and maybe played it. Marngrook was played in places close to Melbourne too and some people recorded it.

How could Marn Grook have an offside rule. There was no scoring system, no goals to kick at, no ground to protect. It was a simple kick to kick game, not a sport or a code of football.

There is certainly no evidence that any of original commitee were in Sheffield in 1857, so none of them saw or played Sheffield Rules. But you reckon that Sheffield Rules are somehow a possible influence while Marngrook is a fantasy, sorry I can't see your logic there.

I never said that Sheffield Rules had an influence on Melbourne Rules. It could have, but there is no factual evidence for such a claim. What I am pointing out with Sheffield Rules was that it was a similar game that was created in the other side of the world. The people who made the Sheffield rules had no knowledge of Marn Grook, yet they still had similar ideas to some other British subjects from another part of the Empire, here in Australia.

From the earliest days the game was conceived as a "game of our own", why would that phrase be used if the pioneers considered themselves as British?

There is no direct quote of him saying that. And in any case, making your own code of football was not something new. There was heaps around in the era. You agreed upon the rules before you started play a game.

Melbourne Rules was a form of early British football, and has nothing to do with Marn Grook. Its early history had common elements to other football games played in Britain. But the rules evolved into something different, as the soccer and Rugby codes did in Britain when they finally split.

That is what make the game unique and Australian.

 

[Subprime]

How could Marn Grook have an offside rule. There was no scoring system, no goals to kick at, no ground to protect. It was a simple kick to kick game, not a sport or a code of football.

James Dawson observed the game and wrote about it in his 1881 book called “Aborigines: The Languages and Customs of Several Tribes of Aborigines in the Western District of Victoria, Australia”, I dare say he would disagree with your analysis of Marngrook. This passage was reproduced in “The Australian Game of Football” (pg185):

“One of the favourite games is football, in which fifty or as many as one hundred players engage at a time. The ball is about the size of an orange, and is made of opossum-skin, with the fur side outwards. It is filled with pounded charcoal, which gives solidity without much increase in weight, and is tied hard round and round with kangaroo sinews.

The players are divided in two sides and ranged in opposing lines, which are always of a different ‘class’ – white cockatoo against black cockatoo, quail against snake etc. Each side endeavours to keep possession of the ball, which is tossed a short distance by hand, and then kicked in any direction.

The side which kicks it oftenest and furthest gains the game. The person who sends it highest is considered the best player and has the honour of burying it in the ground till required the next day.”

 

[Supermercado]

The book "Tom Willis - His Spectacular Rise and Tragic Fall" is a fair primer on how much influence the rugby game had on Wills

Also details how he wanted to introduce a crossbar that the ball had to cross over to score a goal but was shot down by Smith, Thompson, Hammersley etc..

Great book actually, it focuses heavily on cricket but it's well worth a read for anybody interested in footy history.

 

[scomac]

My understanding is that the players initially played with hats and that when they caught the ball they tossed the hat down and indicate the Mark,hence the name stuck.

 

[desmond23]

i heard a fellow called mark norris invented them mark two years before leigh stains invented the handball and of coarse we cant forgett phil car stains down the ground work on kicking look at wikipedia

 

[Dangas]

idk.

 

[BobbyMorri]

James Dawson observed the game and wrote about it in his 1881 book called “Aborigines: The Languages and Customs of Several Tribes of Aborigines in the Western District of Victoria, Australia”, I dare say he would disagree with your analysis of Marngrook. This passage was reproduced in “The Australian Game of Football” (pg185):

My original point still stands. It was tough to have an offside in a game which has no goals/ground to protect.

 

[Professor Knowall]

Quote:
"The men and boys joyfully assemble when this game is to be played. One makes a ball of possum skin, somewhat elastic, but firm and strong. The players of this game do not throw the ball as a white man might do, but drop it and at the same time kicks it with his foot. The tallest men have the best chances in this game. Some of them will leap as high as five feet from the ground to catch the ball. The person who secures the ball kicks it. This continues for hours and the natives never seem to tire of the exercise."
- Mr. Thomas, Aboriginal Protector, 1841.

How could Marn Grook have an offside rule. There was no scoring system, no goals to kick at, no ground to protect. It was a simple kick to kick game, not a sport or a code of football...

They may have had no scoring system, no goals to kick at, no ground to protect - but that doesn't make it "not a sport or code of football", but rather just a very different code to what we are used to - but still with some striking similarities in a couple of aspects to our 1859 game.

Initial May 1859 Rules -

Rule VI Any player catching the Ball directly from the foot may call 'mark'. He then has a free kick; no player from the opposite side being allowed to come inside the spot marked. (no mention of feet having to be on the ground)

X. The Ball, while in play, may under no circumstances be thrown

Rule X had an equivalent in Marn Grook (see above) - but not in rugby.

And in 1860, a paean to one of the founders of our game (and another anti-rugby advocate), William Hammersley, appears in an 1860 edition of "Bells Life - "Swift as an Eagle on he wing ... He leaps high in the air and kicks the volume round ..."

I wonder why he leapt high in the air?? Surely not in order to "kick the volume round". He must have kicked the volume round after he leapt high in the air -to take the mark. This was written within 12 months of the first set of rules.

Quote:
From the earliest days the game was conceived as a "game of our own", why would that phrase be used if the pioneers considered themselves as British?

... There is no direct quote of him saying that. ...

Actually, there is! To quote a contemporary source - one of the pioneers of Australoian Football, H.C.A. Harrison, in his autobiography, ‘The Story of an Athlete, recalled - (chp7) "Till the year 1858, no football had been played in the colony. But when T.W. Wills arrived back from Englan, fresh from Rugby School, full of enthusiam for all kinds of sport, he suggested that we should make a start with it. He very sensible advised us not to take up Rugby although that had been his own game because he considered it unsuitalbe for grown men ... But to work out a game of our own.

Which is exactly what they did!

... That is what make the game unique and Australian.

It certainly is - and right from the very start. And even a conservative Anglophile (but excellent historian) Geoffrey Blainey, writes ("A Game of Our Own") -.

"..."The game is essentially an Australian invention. It arose ... When the various kinds of English football were still in a state of flux. ... Almost at once it was a distinctive game. ... far removed from rugby and soccer. ..." (Preface)

"... Selected by footballers themselves ... the committee of rule makers met on Tuesday 17 May 1859 and discussed rules which for the most part had been found to work well the preceding season ..." (p 47)

"... In designing the rules for football ... they were not merely plucking rules from here and there and combining them, The games played the previous season on the capacious grounds of Melbournemust already have brought certain rules and styles of play into prominence ... the new committee had to confirm those rules which most footballers (who came from all over the UK, Scotland and Ireland) were likely to accept.... they were also devising new rules which might solve some of the recent disputes that had occurred during play. By the end of the meeting they had moved a long way from the more rugby-style rules ..." (p 48)

"... Migrants who first saw Australian football in the mid 1860's were concious that it differed from every English version of football. ..." (p 61)