Rugby Vs Australian Rules Footy Vs Soccer

Australia soccer team, 1922 

playing against New Zealand, Wiki 

Why did Australia, with its relatively small population, perform so well at team sports?
a] To create a dist­inct nat­ional identity in an area in which we could do very well! Vic­torious sports people often became national or even inter­nation­al heroes
b] Tolerable winters that encouraged outdoors sports
c] Sport enabled well-loved national val­ues, like mateship, to be played out. Austral­ians loudly demanded fair play; sports cheats were often chastised for being un-Australian.

Soccer arrived in Australia with Britain immigrants in the 1870s, and the first formally organised club, The Wanderers, was founded in 1880 in Sydney. But it was not until 1911 that a governing body was formed to oversee soccer activities in the whole of Australia. Soccer never became the dominant sport in any Australian state, remaining the favoured sport only in large ethnic centres before after WW2.

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At first New South Wales Rugby Union started in Australia with the first club emerging in 1863 at Sydney University. And by the 1890s, clashes between colonial Rugby Union sides attracted thousands of fans paying to see games. But player discontent was spreading, with men needing pay­ment for lost work-time and in­surance for sporting injuries. Sadly Rug­by’s strong amat­eur ethos meant no change happened.

Ditto Britain. Rugby became hugely popular in northern English industrial towns and demands grew for players to be paid. When the Rugby Football Union refused to allow professionalism in 1886 and 1893, northern rugby clubs met to found the Northern Union i.e League

Kangaroo Rugby League Team

National Australian Team, 1908

Rugby League, 1932

Australia Vs Britain

So Rugby League started as a rebel compet­it­ion, establish­ed in defiance of the NSW Union. In Aug 1907 leading Union players and support­ers met in Sydney to create the NSW Rugby Football League. A key aspect of the new code was that players would be paid for playing sport, from April 1908.

The early success of Rugby League depended on NSW player Herb­ert Dally Messenger. Approached by Sydney business man James Giltinan, trade unionist-Labour politician Henry Hoyle and champion cricketer Vic­tor Trumper, Dally switched allegiance to League in 1907 and quickly emerged as the first superstar. Messenger’s first full season of Rugby league was played in 1908 when there were 9 clubs in Sydney. Then League spread north with the estab­lish­ment of the Qld Rugby Ass­ociation in 1909.

The ultimate clash between the two Rugby codes came before WW1. Returning from a successful tour of England, players from the Wall­ab­ies Australian Rugby Union side were invited to play against a representative League side, despite the threat of being banned from playing Union. Note the Wallabies’ leading players defected to League!

After struggling through its first two years of competition, Rugby League consolidated its position in 1910. Growing attendances at club games, int­er-state and international fixtures reflected the game’s growing popularity and financial stability. An English side toured, followed by an Australasian tour of Britain in 1911–12.

The 15-man Union game was the only Rugby code offered to stud­ents in the Greater Public Schools of NSW, ever since they met at a decisive meeting in 1892 and decided to be Union-focused. After all Union was always a gentleman’s game. But more than that! The separation of Rugby codes between private and public schools clearly reflected NSW’s class and religious divide. In the early C20th, Rugby League admin­is­t­rators were ass­oc­iated with both the Labour Party and Catholicism - my spouse’s middle class Sydney school never allowed its boys to play a working-class sport.

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The Australian rules that developed did indeed come from Britain but became uniquely Australian by the later C19th.  Sport and the National Imagination by Richard Cashman asked how sport affected the development of national consciousness in Australia? Rules reflected the uniqueness of Austral­ian society because we were a large country with a small population. The nation had:

1] very large city footy fields compared to Rugby/soccer;

2] 18 players from each of the 2 teams on the ground together, so 36 players and 3 umpires; and
3] long game times (100 minutes plus time on).  Australians wanted “Our Own Game”, so the existing rules of football had to be flex­ib­le, and reflective of Australian values.

Australian Rules Football was organised into a competition in Vic­toria, and was codif­ied in 1858 by the Aust­­ral­­i­an Football Leag­ue. And once inter-colonial foot­ball matches were being played by 1879, a national football governing body was needed. So with Rugby League being the code only in Qld and NSW, Austral­ian Rules dominated all the other states and territories.

Fitzroy Australian Rules Club

in Melbourne, 1904

Footy fans have always attended winter sporting events in masses. By 1897, tens of thousands of spectators attended early Rules matches when top soccer matches in Britain drew under 40,000 fans. The 1938 finals match, Carlton Vs Collingwood, drew 96,834 fans in Melbourne!

Spectacular mark/flying catch

Australian Rules Football, 1914

Australian Rules’ distinctive feature was the spectacular mark, high above the opposition players’ heads, allowing the marking player to run freely toward his own goal posts. Rugby games could never display such aerial elegance and soccer players couldn't use their hands. There was no offside rule; players could not score by carrying the ball between goal posts; umpires used a centre bounce to restart play after each goal; and goal umpires waved two flags to signal a goal and one flag to signal a behind/point.