Tom Wills

Tom Wills

Thomas Wentworth "Tom" Wills (19 August 1835 – 2 May 1880) was a 19th-century sportsman who is considered one of the pioneers of the sport of Australian rules football. Also a notable cricketer, Wills played first-class matches for Victoria, Kent, and the Marylebone Cricket Club.

Born in the British colony of New South Wales, Wills grew up on properties owned by his father, the noted pastoralist Horatio Wills, near Gundagai and Ararat, in what is now the Australian state of Victoria. At the age of 14, Wills was sent to England to attend Rugby School, where he learnt the sport of cricket, as well as an early version of what is now called Rugby football. During his period in England, Wills attended Cambridge University, though he did not matriculate, and played first-class cricket matches for Kent and the Marylebone Cricket Club, as well as representing the university's cricket club in the annual match against Oxford. At this stage, he was described as one of the finest young cricketers in England by Bell's Sporting Life.

Wills returned to Victoria at the end of 1856, where he captained the Victorian cricket team in intercolonial matches against New South Wales and Tasmania. At this time he was also made secretary of the Melbourne Cricket Club, and it is in this role that he became involved in the development of Australian rules football and the formation of the Melbourne Football Club. Along with his cousin, Henry Harrison, and several other people, he was involved in formulating the first laws of Australian football. In 1861, Wills was part of a group of 25 men, including his father, who left to establish a holding in Central Queensland. Three weeks after setting up camp, 19 of the group were murdered by local Aborigines in the Cullin-La-Ringo massacre, the worst massacre of white settlers in the history of Australia. Wills was one of six men who survived the massacre for various reasons, and returned to Melbourne shortly after. Wills continue to play and umpire cricket, playing his last first-class match in 1876, at the age of 40. Psychological trauma from the massacre was worsened by his alcoholism, causing the development of delirium tremens and night terrors. After a stay in the Kew Asylum, Wills was admitted to Royal Melbourne Hospital in May 1880, suffering from extreme delusions, but shortly afterwards escaped from the hospital and returned to his home in Heidelberg, where he committed suicide by stabbing a pair of scissors through his heart.

Wills' role in early Australian sporting life, particularly in regard to the establishment of Australian rules football, was generally not recognised until the latter half of the 20th century. A statue of Wills was erected outside of the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 2002, and he was an inaugural inductee into the Australian Football Hall of Fame. As part of the Australian Football League's celebrations of the "150th Year of Australian Football", round 19 of the 2008 AFL season was named "Tom Wills Round".