Origins of Australian football

The origins of Australian rules football date back to the late 1850s in Melbourne, the capital city of Victoria.

There is documentary evidence of "foot-ball" being played in Australia as early as the 1820s. These games were poorly documented but appear to have been informal, one-off affairs. In 1858, cricketers, sports' enthusiasts and school students began to regularly play variants of English public school football in the parklands of Melbourne. The following year, when the Melbourne Football Club was formed, four members codified the first laws of Australian rules football.

Professional historians began to take a serious interest in the origins of Australian rules football in the late 1870s, and the first academic study of the sport's origins was published in 1982. Since then, empirical research has debunked various origin myths, including the view that Australian rules football is derived from the Irish sport of Gaelic football. It has also been claimed that indigenous football games such as Marngrook played a role in the formation of Australian rules football, but there is little evidence to support this theory.

Some form of football was played in Australia dating back to the period before European colonization. With the arrival of Europeans, a form of football was played very early on with matches being played in by 1829 in Sydney, Melbourne by 1840, Adelaide by 1843, Brisbane by 1849, and Tasmania by 1851. Most of these early games took part at local festivals, with no clear set of rules being used, and no codified version of any game being played. Regional versions of football were played in places like South Australia using house rules predating Victorian codification of the game. The versions played locally in this period borrowed elements from the various codes that are present today including Australian rules, soccer and rugby football with the rules played being decided prior to the start of the match.

...
Wikipedia