Occupational therapy patients of Wolston Park help to build Ellerton’s cricket ground in 1911. Photo: Contributed
ON a winter’s afternoon in August 1875, two teams gathered on the lawn of the Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum in Goodna for a game of football. This was the birthplace of Australian soccer.
If you are stunned right now I’m not surprised. So was I.
Each and every football code in Australia has one game, one event or one day that is commonly accepted as the birthplace of the code in this country.
In Australian Rules, it’s a match between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar School in 1858, playing a game conceived by Tom Wills a year earlier.
Australia’s first rugby union club was formed at Sydney University in 1864, ahead of the first metropolitan competition a decade later. Rugby league’s breakaway from union ranks occurred in 1907/08.
These events are promoted as the genesis of each sport, mainly for the purpose of marketing history to followers of the game.
Many historians will argue evidence to support these claims is often flimsy, and the original version of the sports we know today occurred much later than the dates and times suggested by football administrators.
With that in mind, the Goodna claim may come as a surprise.
It’s long been accepted that the first game of soccer in Australia to be played under British Association Rules was in 1880, between the Wanderers and the King’s School at Parramatta Common in Sydney.
Football Federation Australia has accepted the date as the first official game played in Australia and even promoted that. However, new evidence uncovered by a team of Australian Football historians proves Goodna is the true home of the Australian round ball game.
An extract from The Queenslander on Monday, August 9, 1875 is the first piece of evidence supporting the claim.
A report of a football game at Goodna described the contest between a visiting football team from Brisbane and a team of inmates and wards men from the Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum. Within that report was clear indication soccer was being played rather than rugby, which was the dominant code of the time.
BRISBANE CLUB V. WOOGAROO ASYLUM.
IN accordance with a challenge issued by the Woogaroo players, eighteen “braves” of the Brisbane Football Club donned their war paint, left Brisbane per rail at 12.5 on Saturday last, and arrived at Woogaroo at 1.15 p.m.. Play commenced at half-past 2, after arranging the rules and appointing umpires; Mr Sheehan acting as such for Brisbane, and Mr Jack for Woogaroo.
One rule provided that the ball should not be handled nor carried, and this condition gave a great advantage to the “bedlam” folks, as the active little Brisbane fellows thereby lost half the benefit of their “lissomeness”, nuggets was “bound to cipher up 500 Word Extract from Original Article Only...
Article From Publicly Accessible RSS Newsfeed - Displayed for Rugby Rules Context : View Full Original Article Here
