Brisbane Australian Football Club - Mid-1800s: First Football Games in Brisbane

Mid-1800s: First Football Games in Brisbane

Football has been played in Brisbane from very early times, as evidenced by this notice in The Moreton Bay Courier in 1849 (a mere 25 years after the arrival of the first white settlers in the Brisbane region, at which time the population was around 2000 people, many of whom were former convicts and poor Irish immigrants):

ANNIVERSARY.

TO the SPORTING BLADES of BRISBANE.

BEING determined that the Anniversary shall not pass over without a little fun, in addition to the usual English Sports, the Lads of Kangaroo Point

CHALLENGE

all comers to a Game of Foot Ball – preliminaries to be settled at the Commercial Inn, Kangaroo Point, on the evening of the 24th.

Given the inchoate nature of the various types of football at that time, they may have been playing simple mob football. Alternatively, they could have been playing in accordance with the recently published Rugby school rules (1845) or the Cambridge Rules (1848), the latter being the forerunner of Association Football rules. The game that was to become 'Australian Rules' football was not to be codified for another 10 years.