Tom Wills - in Memoriam

In Memoriam

Monument and pavilion to Wills in Moyston, Victoria

In 1998, Wills was honoured by a monument in Moyston, his home town, which includes a pavilion and historical storyboard based on information supplied by historian Col Hutchison. The storyboard recognises the contribution of Marn Grook to the game of Australian football.

There is a painting of Tom Wills in the foyer of the Geelong Football Club at Kardinia Park in Geelong.

Wills is honoured with a sculpture at the MCG by Louis Laumen erected in 2002. The sculpture reads that Wills:

"Did more than any other person – as footballer and umpire, co-writer of the rules and promoter of the game – to develop Australian Football during its first decade."

A room in the Great Southern Stand, known as the Tom Wills Room, reserved for corporate functions is also named after him.

Round 19 of the 2008 AFL Season was named Tom Wills Round to celebrate 150 years of Australian Football and featured a curtain raiser at the MCG between Scotch and Melbourne Grammar to mark the match which Wills famously umpired.

For many years, Wills role in the birth of Australian Football was played down by MCC officials who instead credited most of this to his cousin (and also brother in-law), H. C. A. Harrison, and some believe this to be due Harrison's apparently more wholesome character. As the MCC has become more liberal in its attitudes, and Australians generally embrace convict heritage, Wills contribution has been recognised and acknowledged.

In 2008, Victoria's busiest motorway interchange, the Monash-EastLink interchange in outer-suburban Melbourne, was named the Tom Wills Interchange.

Wills has inspired numerous works in Australian popular culture. Singer-songwriters such as Mick Thomas, Shane Howard and Neil Murray have written songs about him, and Martin Flanagan's 1998 novel The Call has been described as a "historical imagining into the life of Wills".