Each week throughout the 2016 season, the Queensland Australian Football Forensics (QAFF) will bring you a short article about our code’s history in Queensland over the past 150 years. Both the QAFF and the AFLQ hope this will pique your interest and encourage you to find out more about our great game’s past.
So, let’s begin at the beginning:
On 22 May 1866, the Brisbane Courier published a very short advertisement seeking interest from the men of Brisbane to form a football club. Under the very simple heading, “Football Club”, the passage read:
“A Meeting of Gentlemen desirous of forming a FOOTBALL CLUB will be held at Braysher’s Metropolitan Hotel, on Tuesday, the 22nd May, at half past 4 o’clock.”
These were humble origins, and very much to the point.
Braysher’s Metropolitan Hotel was situated in Edward Street, later forming the basis for Brisbane’s Tattersall’s Club. In the burgeoning Brisbane community, many citizens were looking for new forms of activities and entertainment to occupy their interests. It required the initiative of enthusiastic people with the means and time to create these opportunities.
A later article reporting a summary of the meeting declared it to be “very encouraging”, and that a committee had been formed to prepare and present a code of rules. A “football club” had been formed – although, as yet, it had not been determined what definitive set of rules would be followed. Flexibility of rules was still an option for each community and township throughout Australia as each formed their own clubs. However, given that the inaugural committee included a number of Victorians familiar with the rules of their “local” game, it is suspected that the intention was always to adopt what would later become Australian Rules football.
At the Club’s second meeting, 31 May 1866, Tom Board presented the “Melbourne Rules” for the committee’s consideration. These were duly accepted and adopted – and thus, we see the birth of Australian Football in Queensland.
To find out more about #AFLQ150 year anniversary https://aflq.com.au/aflq150/
QAFF, a volunteer group of researchers and writers, is currently writing the 150-year history of Australian Football in Queensland. The aim is to publish their 800+ page book in July 2016, 150 years after the first game in Queensland. If you can help support this project, please contact QAFF via their website, www.q150.net.au
