ON AUGUST 7, 1858, 40-a-side turned up at Richmond Paddock for a game of football.
The goal posts were 990 yards apart, the field dotted with trees.
Tom Wills, the man regarded as one of the game’s founders, was an umpire.
The game was played over three weeks, the winner the best of three goals in the custom of the Rugby School rules. On September 4, the match between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar – including several staff members – was declared a draw.
It was out of this match that the modern game is believed to have evolved. The following May, Wills and several others sat in Jerry Bryant’s pub on Wellington Parade and developed a set of 10 rules governing a new code.
Pre-dating the Melbourne Cup, Wimbledon, and even the Ashes, the competition between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar is believed to be the second only to the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, established in 1829.
“I can’t think of any competition out there that’s lasted this long. It’s not usual that you can have a sporting competition that can run for 150 years,” Scotch College historian Dr Jim Mitchell says.
The suggestion that the Scotch-Grammar match is the first ever game of Australian football is a controversial one – there were several other games played earlier, usually in the form of scratch matches combining the rules from various football codes.
But former Scotch teacher Bruce Brown argues that the tradition, regardless of this debate, is to be celebrated.
“It mustn’t have been much of a spectacle,” Brown says. “But this game actually publicly heralded, I think, the enthusiasm we have for football not only in Victoria but across the country.”
The Scotch-Grammar match has been played at various venues over the decades, including the old South Melbourne football ground. During the 1940s, it moved to the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Today, the schools alternate the role of host to the match, which attracts several thousand vocal spectators every year.
In 1989 a cup was instituted to honour two legends from the schools.
“The cup was well named,” Brown explains. “It honours Dr Don Cordner, who was a great Melburnian, later to be a Brownlow medallist in the VFL, 1946. He went on to be president of the Melbourne Cricket Club.
“Mick Eggleston was at Scotch College in 1947, a great footballer, athlete. He took up teaching as a career, came to Scotch as a master in 1958 then went on to be one of the great Scotch football coaches.
"All the boys who played in his teams, particularly in the 1970s, treasure the memories.”
Sadly, Eggleston died suddenly from a brain tumour prior to the Cup being instituted. His wife, Nelle, is a much-loved figure at the school and she and Cordner attend the match each year to present the winners’ trophy.
Nelle has presented the Cup to Scotch on 15 of the 19 occasions the Cordner-Eggleston has been played. Throughout the match’s history, 107 players have been drafted from the schools into the VFL/AFL – nine of them current.
On August 8, 2008, Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar return to Richmond Paddock, in its modern-day incarnation of the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
The schools will play the curtain-raiser to the Melbourne versus Geelong match to open the AFL’s Tom Wills Round, in celebration of that rough 40-a-side contest, 150 years ago.
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Round 19 is Tom Wills Round, celebrating 150 years of Australian Football. One of the inventors of the sport, Wills played in the first recorded game and umpired one of the earliest matches between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar School on August 7, 1858.
Click here for more Tom Wills Round coverage.
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The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily of the clubs or the AFL.
