Hobart 1870: Final Thoughts and Conclusions

My aim over the previous posts has been to establish whether a game of soccer was played in Hobart in May 1870, and explore the circumstances surrounding the game. I am confident High School and the 18^th Regiment were playing soccer under the 1863 FA Rules, as refereed by the recently arrived Cambridge graduate T.D. Warner.

This would mean Hobart becomes the location of Australia’s earliest confirmed soccer game, which occurred five years before the next confirmed game, played at Woogaroo Asylum in Goodna, near Ipswich.

That said, there were other games in Melbourne and Sydney around 1869 and 1870 where hints exist as being soccer but without final conclusive proof. Hopefully further evidence can appear on Trove or elsewhere which can clarify these games. I don’t expect the High School game to forever be the earliest confirmed game of soccer in Australia.

I’d like to finish with some final thoughts and theories to stimulate further research into our game and early soccer in Australia.

“The General Game”

The rules printed in the Tasmanian Times were modifiers of “the general game”.

I would like to propose “the general game” was Rugby. My reasoning based on considering who was the intended audience of the article. I think the audience wasn’t purely the general Hobart sporting public, but the 18^th Regiment.

Both the 18^th and 14^th Regiments, posted in New Zealand at the same time, seem far more conversant with Rugby than any non-carrying football code which may have been played in the UK before the early 1860s.

I propose the rules printed in the Tasmanian Times were written out to explain the home club rules of football to the 18^th Regiment to ensure both sides were playing the same game on that Saturday afternoon. These rule modifiers may have been sent to the garrison and the newspaper.

We know Hobart teams didn’t play under a unified code in this era, and players tended to get rather annoyed if their opposition pulled out obscure rules halfway through a game.

The other hint “the general game” was Rugby is the modifier explicitly banning throwing. Throwing was already banned under the 1866 Melbourne Rules. If Melbourne Rules was “the general game” there would be no need to mention it in the rules printed in the newspaper.

1869

Did the arrival of T.D. Warner introduce soccer to Hobart, or strengthen an existing soccer sensibility?

 In Inglis and Warner, High School had two recently arrivals from Cambridge in leadership roles, either of which could have seen the school adopt soccer.

This leads to two considerations regarding the 1869 Hobart football season.

The year 1869 is the least documented year of Tasmanian football in Trove. A few games in Launceston, but with their oval ball we know they were leaning towards Melbourne Rules. There is no mention of what was going on in Hobart at all.

What if some Hobart teams were already playing soccer in 1869? What if Inglis bought the FA Rules to Hobart in 1868? If soccer was already partially established, this would explain why the High School insisted the Army Rugbyites learn new rules.

Men Versus Boys

There is another possibility – that High School played Rugby in 1868 – that is this was their general game. If High School played Rugby, why the need to print the rules at all? Why not play Rugby against the military.

That said, if High School did play Rugby, would you really want your boys up against the fighting men of the 18^th, especially if the visitors had a fearsome reputation?  Maybe you want to play a code where physical bulk may not make so much of a difference. 

Maybe you adopt soccer for the game?

Questions

There are many questions which, if answers could be uncovered, would give us a clearer picture as to why soccer was played in Hobart in 1870, and possibly why it faltered.

Are there any surviving records from the 18th Regiment or High School detailing information about this match?

Why did the Tasmanian Times republish the piece from the Standard?

Who was Drop-Kick?

Did a meeting ever take place to formalise the rules, as suggested by Drop-Kick, for the 1870 season?

Were all the games in Hobart, 1870, played under the same rules?

Did T.D. Warner play football at Trinity Hall?

Did Inglis play soccer at Trinity College?

Were McMahon’s Cricket and Sports Manual or certain Cassell’s publications available in Hobart around the turn of the decade?

Under what rules was Hobart football played in 1869?

Some of these questions may never be answered, but with new material appearing on Trove all the time, more of this story may appear soon.

Or maybe an earlier game somewhere else in Australia will be uncovered.

Coda

On the 13^th of May, 1871, exactly a year after Drop-Kick called for unified rules, The Mercury reported a meeting of the Break O Day cricket club to form a football team. Their first match was against High School. The reports into their game included the words “spills” and “scrimmage”. 

Clearly this was not soccer. That experiment, such as it was, was over for the time being.

What happened in the next few years is hard to guess, though it seems clubs played under a variety of rules, often decided ahead of the game.

Perhaps the most vivid voice from this period is our mysterious Drop-kick. The mononymous writer, if the same individual, managed to secure a regular column which ran in the Tribune.

Drop-Kick is very useful for modern day researchers. He has opinions. He praises teams. He chides teams.  He annoys people. 

What, for instance, to make about this game between Richmond and City where running with the ball, tripping and hacking were banned?  It is through Drop-Kick we have additional evidence rules continued to be often arranged game-by-game.

The best place to go next in the story of Tasmanian soccer is Ian Syson, whose work on this decade has already been acknowledged. One of the quotes he discovered was the remembrances of one W.H. Cundy in September 1931, who claimed football in Tasmania in the 1870s:

 “consisted of Soccer, Rugby and a cross between the two games known as the Tasmanian game.” Mercury, September 22, 1931

This gives further weight to the 1870 game being soccer, and for the code to linger in Tasmania prior to game’s confirmed return to Hobart in 1879.

By 1879, T.D. Warner was undertaking his priestly duties in West Maitland. Inglis had died. The 18^th Regiment was in Afghanistan. High School’s days were number, closing in 1884.  Drop-Kick had been silent since 1877.

A new generation had taken over, but that is (as told by Syson) another story.

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank the various members of #SokkahHistoryTwitter including Ian Syson, Paul Hunt, Paul Mavroudis, Peter Eady, Paul Nicholls, Mark Boric and Troy Chandler for answering questions, offering encouragement, feedback and or just creating an inclusive environment for someone new to start exploring the history or Australian soccer. . 

I’d like to also thank the many who have tagged and edited Trove articles, many who had no interest in soccer, but made the articles easy to search.

Lastly, thanks also to the National Library in regard to my Cassell’s enquiry.

Part 1: Introduction - Australia's Earliest Known Soccer Game?
Part 2: The Rules of the Game
Part 3: When Did The FA Rules Reach Australia?
Part 4: Game Day
Part 5: The Military Men and the "Upmire"
Part 6: Final Thought and Conclusions