Origins of Australian Rules Football - The Founder of The Game

The Founder of The Game

In the 21st century the role played by Tom Wills in the establishment of the game is generally recognised as pivotal. However, in the latter part of the 19th century and much of the 20th, H.C.A. Harrison was accepted as "the father of Australian rules football". He was to become a vice-president of the Victorian Football Association and later the inaugural chairman of the Victorian Football League and was actively associated with the Melbourne Football Club until the late 1920s.

Journalist Martin Flanagan postulates that the game's administrators engaged in historical revisionism of the story of Tom Wills involvement in the origins of football because he was a drunkard and because he committed suicide.

Read more about this topic:  Origins Of Australian Rules Football

Famous quotes containing the words founder and/or game:

    In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The family environment in which your children are growing up is different from that in which you grew up. The decisions our parents made and the strategies they used were developed in a different context from what we face today, even if the “content” of the problem is the same. It is a mistake to think that our own experience as children and adolescents will give us all we need to help our children. The rules of the game have changed.
    Lawrence Kutner (20th century)