It will no doubt come as a surprise to many that the first attempts to combine Australian football with another code did not involve Gaelic, but American, football.

Austus

The hybrid sport was called Austus football and was described as "one of the most scientific games ever devised, and is a combination of kicking, which features the Australian Rules game, and the forward passing attack, which is stressed in American football."

It originated in 1943, in Australia, where it gained great popularity among the Australians, and the visiting American soldiery. Before the end of the war, this form of sport, almost unknown on the American mainland, was in great favour in Australia, where it was a featured form of international football play.

H. Archie Richardson, of Australia, now of Los Angeles, who keeps in intimate touch with sports affairs, in both countries, explained:

"The American soldiers put on exhibitions of the American style of football in Melbourne. The Australians didn't like it. There wasn't enough sustained action, too little playing, too much time out for making new plays.

"The Americans saw the Australian game of football, and liked it immensely. Its bristling action won them. But when the Americans attempted to compete with the Australians, it hardly was a contest, because the Australian game stresses kicking at which Americans, generally, are not very adept.

In this crisis, Ern Cowley, baseball editor of the Melbourne Sporting Globe, was asked to draw up a set of rules for a new game - and he made an excellent job of it.

"Ern, realizing that the Australians had all the best of it in kicking, ruled that there was to be not only kicking in the new game, but unlimited passing. The Australians could kick splendidly, but passing was new to them; the Americans were fine passers, but not much at kicking. So there was an offset.

"The basic rules of the Australian Rules Football game are used for this new sport, the big difference being that passing, which is barred in Australian Rules, is permitted in the new game and the American football is used. The Americans can outpass the Australians, but the Australians can outkick the Americans and so all is 50-50, and this new game, played during 1943, brought about some thoroughly exciting matches between Australians and Americans.

"The game has provided great fun for the participants, and the novelty of it, especially the long passes by the Americans, brought out some very large crowds for the matches that were played for the benefit of various War Charities.

"At Geelong, on August 25, 1943, Private William Jost, of the U.S. Marines, established an international record for passing with a throw of 76 yards,1 foot, 6 inches, during a passing-versus-kicking contest. Jost met three of the star kickers of the Victorian Football League, and bewildered spectators with the distance and the accuracy of his throws, especially, of course, the record toss.

"The new game was given the name 'Austus', being the combined abbreviation for Australia (Aust.) and the United States (U.S.), and it may be that this game, created in a world torn by war, may become the international method of future football play." (Frank G. Menke, The New Encyclopedia of Sports)

Gaelic & Australian Football

However, it would be to Ireland, and not the USA, that VFL administrators would eventually look to for international competition.

There is no denying the similarities between Australian football and Gaelic football. Indeed, there are those that have suggested that Australian football owes its origins to Gaelic football. However, his notion has been refuted by prominent historian, Professor Geoffrey Blainey in his history of Australian football, A Game of our Own.

In fact, Australian football started as a variation on the various football games as played in the English Public (private) schools during the 1850s.

The person who did the most to establish Australian football was Tom W. Wills. Melbourne born, he was sent to England at age 14 where he attended Rugby School in the Midlands. He was not a brilliant scholar, but excelled at games. He became captain of football (obviously Rugby style) and was a champion cricketer, scored 51 runs in a match against an All England Eleven, took nine wickets for Kent against Gentlemen of Sussex and a "five fa" at Lords against the M.C.C.

He returned to Melbourne in 1856 and became well known for his cricketing talents. He soon looked for a winter activity and this led him to write to the new sporting weekly, Bells Life in Victoria on 10 July 1858. Part of the letter reads "Now that cricket has been put aside for some months to come, ...why can they (cricketers) not, I say, form a foot-ball club, and form a committee of three or more to draw up a code of laws?"

A few games of football were played in 1858 but it was not until 17 May 1859 that Tom Wills chaired the meeting of seven men who framed the first rules of Australian football. Four of the seven had experience of football at Britain's schools and universities. They were divided on what the rules should be, and consulted copies of the rules of the English schools - Rugby, Eton, Winchester and Harrow.

They framed a set of ten rules from their knowledge of the English games, and their experience of the previous season. They wanted a game that was simpler than the complicated Rugby game, and a game that had less of the "vigour and roughness" of Rugby and the other school games.

Three of the ten original Australian rules of 1859 that were taken from Rugby are remarkably still features of the modern version of the two codes, and clearly indicate the origin of Australian football.

V. In case the ball is kicked behind Goal, any one of the side behind whose Goal it is kicked may bring it 20 yards in front of any portion of the space between the "Kick Off" posts, and shall kick it as nearly as possible in a line with the opposite Goal. This early kick off after a behind in Australian football has the equivalent in Rugby, the 22 drop out.

VI. Any player catching the Ball directly from the foot may call "mark". He then has a free kick; no player from the opposite side being allowed to come inside the spot marked. The mark is still a part of Rugby, and has become the most spectacular feature of Australian football.

IX. When a ball goes out of bounds (the same being indicated by a row of posts) it shall be bought back to the point where it crossed the boundary line, and thrown in at right angles with that line. This feature developed into the boundary throw in Australian football and the broadly similar line-out in Rugby, which still retains the row of posts!

In a chapter entitled "The Gaelic Myth" Professor Blainey dispels the notion that Australian football is a direct descendant of Gaelic football. In contrast to the voluminous evidence of the connections between early English football codes and Australian football "not even one piece of positive evidence for a Gaelic origin of football has so far been found and I can see strong circumstantial evidence against such a notion." Only one Irishman was in the original committee of seven, and he attended the Rugby stronghold of Trinity College, Dublin.

None of the early football clubs wore the green of Ireland, Protestant schools rather than Catholic ones were prominent in the early decades of football, the Irishmen in strongly Irish towns in Victoria shunned football in favour of Hurly, and it seems that no one in 19th century Victoria expressed the opinion that the Australian game of football had derived from the Gaelic game.

The early players and developers of football could have learnt little from the rules of Gaelic football because there were no written rules until 1885. By that stage Gaelic football was in danger of extinction. The ravages of the 1840s famine and the massive outflow of people to the United States had weakened the old sporting customs in rural Ireland.

In 1884 Michael Cusack founded the Gaelic Athletic Association in Dublin to prevent the traditional Gaelic sports from dying out. The first rules for Gaelic football were written in February 1885 and like Australian football the rules were much modified in the following years. In 1886 tackling was banned from the Gaelic game, and it did not contain the features common to Australia and English codes such as marks, punted free kicks, kickoffs and goals from kicks only.

The chief similarity between the games, the lack of an offside law arose independently, and not through imitation.

"Today's similarities tell us little about the complicated history of each game. Just as two games can grow apart over time, so they can become more alike over time. At one period, Australian football and Gaelic football grew apart; in another period they converged in spirit more than in rules. Australian football in the first years had virtually no likeness to Gaelic football as played today. It is the modern versions of Gaelic and Australian football which gives rise to the dubious belief that the two codes are first cousins or even father and son.

The history of American football offers a similar lesson. It warns us of the hazard of assuming that a code of football alters so little in the course of a century that we can deduce its parentage and manner of birth simply by examining its present rules. Today no two codes of football are further apart than Australian and American football, and yet both were the offspring more of Rugby than of any other code". (Geoffrey Blainey, A Game of Our Own, pg. 92-93)

Australian football was from the earliest years a spectator sport. In 1880 when the FA Cup Final in England drew 6,000 spectators, an important match in Melbourne would draw 15,000. In 1886 the two champion teams of the decade South Melbourne and Geelong attracted 36,000 to a ground near Albert Park. The crowds flocked to the games because they wanted to see "the long run with the ball, the high mark, the clever dodging and the sudden physical clash", so the law makers opened the game up, protected the player going for a mark, and allowed the umpire to quickly disperse scrimmages.

The rules have continued to be modified and the game we now know evolved slowly, rather than being created at one meeting.

The Galahs

The first visit of an Australian Rules team to Ireland took place in October 1967. A team called "The Galahs", organised by Harry Beitzel, defeated All Ireland champions Meath 3.16 (25) to 1.10 (13) and Mayo 2.12 (18) to 2.5 (11) in front of crowds of 23,419 and 20,121 respectively.

These matches were played because of an All-Ireland final telecast seen by Harry Beitzel on a business trip to London in the mid-sixties. A former VFL umpire, Beitzel had charge of the 1955 Grand Final between Collingwood and Melbourne. A decade later he was managing director of his own PR and Management Consulting firm and was also well-known as a TV panellist and radio commentator. Watching that All-Ireland broadcast in his London hotel room he was struck by the similarities between the two sports and vowed to bring them together but, with little encouragement from the VFL authorities of the time, he decided to go it alone. He enthusiastically organised the 1967 trip to Ireland and was strongly supported by one of the sport's all-time legends, Ron Barassi, who readily agreed to captain the touring team.

Meath traveled to Australia in March 1968 on the most successful tour ever made by a Gaelic football team (five wins in five matches). Beitzel was back with another squad in October 1968 for games against Kerry, Meath, Down and the Combined Universities. Kerry toured Australia in March 1970 and another Beitzel group returned in October 1978 to play UCD, Dublin and Kerry. Kerry then visited Australia in October 1981 as part of a round-the-world tour.

Compromise Rules

It wasn't until Australian schoolboy teams toured Ireland in 1981 and 1984 and a Dublin Colleges team toured Australia in 1983 that talk of a fully blown international series led to a senior tour.

In 1984 the first of a series of "Compromise Rules" matches were played between Ireland and Australia. They were a compromise in that they combined features of Australian Rules and Gaelic Football. A medal commemorating Beitzel's part in initiating the contacts between the two codes was awarded for the 'best and fairest' player in each series. Results:

An Australian Under 17 representative team also toured Ireland in April 1991, consisting of players from each State and Territory. Australia won all four provincial games and the international against Ireland at Croke Park, Dublin, before 8,000 spectators.

International Rules

After a gap of eight years the Australia v. Ireland series was revived in 1998 - this time as 'International Rules'. Debate continues to surround the merits of these matches. Some see them as Australia's only meaningful chance of international competition, whilst others take the view that International Rules is merely Gaelic football with behind posts.