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:
“Hail, hail, plump paunch, O the founder of taste
For fresh meats, or powdered, or pickle, or paste;
Devourer of broiled, baked, roasted or sod,
And emptier of cups, be they even or odd;
All which have now made thee so wide i’ the waist
As scarce with no pudding thou art to be laced;
But eating and drinking until thou dost nod,
Thou break’st all thy girdles, and break’st forth a god.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art ... is merely romantic fiction.... The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened.”
—Tom Wolfe (b. 1931)