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Thomas Wentworth "Tom" Wills (December 19, 1835—May 1880) was an Australian sportsman who is credited along with his cousin Henry Colden Harrison as one of the inventors of Australian rules football.

Early life

Wills was born in 1835 on the Molonglo Plains, near present day Queanbeyan, New South Wales. In 1839, he moved with his brother, Horatio Wills to Lexington, a 125,000 acre property in the Ararat District in western Victoria.

If Thomas was the eldest child, and he moved with his brother to Lexington in 1839, that means a three year old and maybe a two year old moved to Lexington. How did they get there? Did they catch a roo from Burra?

As a boy, Wills played Marn Grook, an Aboriginal game similar to modern football codes with members of a nearby tribe. At the age of fourteen he was sent to England to attend the famous Rugby School.

Cricket career

On his return to Melbourne in 1856 at the age of twenty-one he became one of Victoria's best cricketers, representing the colony in intercolonial cricket matches against New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania. He became a high-ranking member of the Melbourne Cricket Club, despite his convict heritage.

It was also at about this time that Tom's father Horatio Wills emigrated north to Queensland where they took up a holding at Cullin-La-Ringo in the Nogoa region about two hundred miles from Rockhampton. They had only been on the holding for three weeks when they were attacked by a party of Aborigines who killed nineteen of the group, including Tom's father. Tom was away from the property at the time, having been sent to a neighbouring property, about two days ride away, for supplies.

Football

During July 1858, Wills wrote a letter to Bell's Life, a Melbourne-based sporting publication, inviting anyone who might be interested to participate in a football match on the 31st of that month in Richmond, a suburb of Melbourne. The following week, Wills umpired the first ever organised Australian rules match between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar School on the land which is now home to the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

On May 17 1859, Wills chaired the meeting which agreed upon the sport's rules, making the Australian game the first code of football to possess codified laws. During that year, he was also heavily involved in the formation of both the Melbourne and Geelong clubs, both of which he played for and both of which are still in existence today, playing in the Australian Football League.

Wills continued to be involved in football, both as a player and administrator, well into the 1860s. His time at Rugby had given him a liking for that school's particular brand of football, and in 1865 he was still trying to introduce a rugby-style cross-bar into the sport.

Death

In his later years, Wills became an alcoholic and in May 1880 at the age of 44 he stabbed himself to death with a pair of scissors.

External links

• Australian Dictionary of Biography entry
• http://www.convictcreations.com/football/inventors.htm
• http://www.footystamps.com/ot_tom_wills.htm
• Cricinfo article on Tom Wills
• ABC Radio National 1998 report on Tom Wills

• 1835 births
• 1880 deaths
• Australian Football Hall of Fame
• Cambridge University cricketers
• Geelong Cats players
• Kent cricketers
• People from Victoria
• Victoria cricketers
• Creators and founders of sports and sporting institutions