Relationship Between Gaelic Football and Australian Rules Football - Origins

Origins

See also: Origins of Australian rules football and History of Gaelic football

Australian rules football was codified in 1859 by members of the Melbourne Football Club. The first rules were devised by the Australian-born Tom Wills, who was educated at Rugby School; Englishmen William Hammersley and J. B. Thompson, fellow students at Cambridge's Trinity College; and Irish Australian Thomas H. Smith, who played rugby football at Dublin University. Their knowledge of English public school football games, and the conditions and terrain of Melbourne's parklands, influenced the first rules of Australian football. It has been suggested that Wills was influenced by an Australian Aboriginal game, Marn Grook, as Wills grew up in an area where the game was played by local tribes. Historians such as Geoffrey Blainey have argued that the origins of Australian rules football lie purely with rugby and other English public school games.

Gaelic football was codified by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in 1887. The sport is thought to have origins in the ancient Irish game of caid. GAA founder and Irish nationalist Michael Cusack wanted the rules of Gaelic football to have little resemblance to the English games making headway in Ireland.

Some historians have argued that Gaelic football was an influence on Australian football. For example, Patrick O'Farrell has pointed out that the Irish sport of hurling, which has similar rules to Gaelic football, was played in Australia as early as the 1840s, and may also have been an influence on the Australian game. B. W. O'Dwyer points out that Australian football has always been differentiated from rugby football by having no limitation on ball or player movement (in the absence of an offside rule), the need to bounce the ball (or toe-kick it, known as a solo in Gaelic football) while running, punching the ball (hand-passing) rather than throwing it, and other traditions. As O'Dwyer says:

These are all elements of Irish football. There were several variations of Irish football in existence, normally without the benefit of rulebooks, but the central tradition in Ireland was in the direction of the relatively new game ...adapted and shaped within the perimeters of the ancient Irish game of hurling... later became embedded in Gaelic football. Their presence in Victorian football may be accounted for in terms of a formative influence being exerted by men familiar with and no doubt playing the Irish game. It is not that they were introduced into the game from that motive ; it was rather a case of particular needs being met...

O'Dwyer's argument relies heavily on the presence of Irish immigrants on the Victorian goldfields during the Victorian goldrushes of the 1850s, and a comparison of the two modern games. There is no conclusive evidence to prove a direct influence of caid on Australian football.

Another theory suggests that influences may have originated from the opposite direction: Archbishop Thomas Croke, one of the founders of the GAA, was the Bishop of Auckland and lived in New Zealand between 1870 and 1875. As a result of the New Zealand gold rushes of the 1860s, there were many Australian-born settlers in New Zealand, and Victorian rules was popular there at the time. Croke therefore had an opportunity to witness the Australian game being played. Such claims are regarded by some historians as purely circumstantial evidence for a relationship between the two codes, and any resemblances are the result of something akin to parallel or convergent evolution. Geoffrey Blainey wrote:

If an historian of football wishes to press the argument that one code must have copied the other, then this conclusion would be difficult to escape: the style of play which Gaelic and Australian football share today was visible in Australia long before it was visible in Ireland. By that line of reasoning Gaelic football must have been the imitator. The present evidence, however, suggests that Gaelic football made its own way ... which happened to be—in the style rather than the formalities of play—in the Australian direction.

Both games are immensely popular in their country of origin and International rules test between the two peak bodies of Australia and Ireland are popular and relatively evenly contested.

Both games are emerging from largely provincial backgrounds and are growing internationally, although the rate of growth of Australian football around the world has increased in recent decades. Gaelic football has been played for longer outside of Ireland than Australian Football outside of Oceania, primarily in areas of the Irish diaspora, such as North America and Europe. In the 21st century Gaelic football has increased in popularity in Asia.