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Tom Wills
Tom Wills the cricketer
Born	August 19, 1835(1835-08-19) Gundagai, New South Wales, Australia
Died	May 3, 1880 (aged 44) Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia
Known for	One of the key inventors of Australian rules football

Thomas Wentworth "Tom" Wills (19 August 1835 – 3 May 1880) was an Australian all-round sportsman who is credited along with his cousin Henry Colden Harrison as one of the inventors of Australian rules football.

Wills was born in 1835 near Gundagai, New South Wales^[1] In 1839, he moved with his family, to Lexington, a 125,000-acre (510 km²) property in the Ararat District in western Victoria.

Although there is no direct evidence that Wills played Marn Grook, an Aboriginal game similar to modern football codes with members of a nearby tribe as a boy, it appears likely. He spoke the language of the people with whom he grew up, the Tjapwurrung, knew their dances, and the first games he played were with local Aboriginal children.^[2] Due to his family's extensive interaction with local aborigines that he would have at the very least seen the game being played and some believe this to have an influence on his rules for Australian Football.

At the age of fourteen he was sent to England to attend the famous Rugby School, where he played the game of rugby football.

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.

In 1868, Wills coached the first Australian cricket team to tour England, which was entirely comprised of Indigenous Australians.

Tom Wills with the Aboriginal cricket team which toured England

Wills was the grandson of a man sent to Sydney from England for highway robbery, and this convict heritage had a strong bearing on his life. Wills was a strong advocate for the rights of free settlers and "emancipated convicts" (those who had proven their worth to society).^[3] The Melbourne Cricket Club, like many institutions of high society, was known to discriminate against the "Convict Stain".^[4][5] An achievement of his advocacy, was his own admission as a high-ranking member of the MCC, despite his convict heritage.

Statue of Tom Wills umpiring one of the earliest recorded match of Australian rules football

Further information: Australian rules football - Early years in Victoria

Some historians claim that Wills was instrumental in setting up at least six "football" clubs in Geelong before his famous letter dated July 1858 to Bell's Life (a Melbourne-based sporting publication) in an attempt to stimulate interest in the sport of football. He participated in the first recorded game played in Australia, a "scratch" match that occurred in the Richmond Paddock (now Yarra Park) on 31 July 1858.

On 7 August 1858, Wills umpired a match between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar School, also in the Richmond Paddock. Played as a 40 per side contest, the game has been accepted as the first match of Australian football. A statue commemorating this event which features Wills as umpire was erected at the MCC members' entry of the MCG.

On 17 May 17 1859, Wills chaired a meeting of the Melbourne Football Club which wrote down the sport's rules for the first time. 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 achieved Champion of the Colony status three times, once for Melbourne and twice for Geelong.

Wills continued his involvement with football as player and administrator into the 1860s. His time at Rugby was influential in his attempt to introduce a rugby-style cross-bar into the sport in 1865.

Monument and pavillion to Tom Wills in Moyston, Victoria

In 1861 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 Indigenous Australians 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.

In his later years, Wills became an alcoholic (which many attribute to the tragic death of his father) and in May 1880 at the age of 44 he stabbed himself to death with a pair of scissors in his Heidelberg home.

In 1998, Wills was honoured by a monument in Moyston, his home town, which includes a pavillion and historical storyboard based on information supplied by historian Colin Hutchison. The storyboard recognises the contribution of Marn Grook to the game of Australian football.

Wills is honoured with a sculpture at the MCG by Louis Laumen erected in 2002. The sculpture reads that Wills:

Did more than any other person - as footballer and umpire, co-writer of the rules and promoter of the game - to develop Australian Football during its first decade.

A room in the Great Southern Stand, known as the Tom Wills Room, reserved for corporate functions is also named after him.

For many years, Wills role in the birth of Australian Football was played down by MCC officials and instead credited most of this to his cousin, H.C.A Harrison, and some believe this to be due Harrison's apparently more wholesome character. As the MCC has become more liberal in its attitudes, and Australians generally embrace convict heritage, Wills contribution has been recognised and acknowledged.

• List of cricketers called for throwing in major cricket matches in Australia

1. ^ Family history states 19 August near Gundagai (reference Thomas Wentworth Wills. An Index of Australian Wills Families: Descendants of Edward Wills. Tom Wills (2006). Retrieved on 2006-07-05.). However, the Australian Dictionary of Biography entry (reference: W. F. Mandle (1976). Wills, Thomas Wentworth Spencer (1835 - 1880). Retrieved on 2007-04-27.) gives the date of birth as 19 December and the location as on the Molonglo Plains, near present day Queanbeyan, New South Wales.
2. ^ http://www.humanrights.gov.au/racial_discrimination/whats_the_score/pdf/afl.pdf
3. ^ Biography of Horatio Wills, Sydney born father to Thomas Wentworth Wills and son of a convict
4. ^ The Convict Stain
5. ^ Tom Wills from MCG - The People's Ground

• Australian Dictionary of Biography entry
• Wills, Tom (2000). Thomas Wentworth Wills: Cricketer & joint creator of Australian rules football. An Index of Australian Wills Families. Tom Wills. Retrieved on 2006-07-05.
• Biography on Full Points Footy
• 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