Relationship between Gaelic football and Australian rules football

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The relationship between Gaelic and Australian football is the subject of a controversy among historians. The question of whether the two codes of football, from Ireland and Australia respectively, have shared origins arises because it is clear even to casual observers that the two games are similar. They are so similar that matches are held between Irish and Australian representative teams, under compromise rules, known as International rules football.

Both Irish and Irish Australian historians, including Patrick O'Farrell, Marcus De Búrca, Chris McConville, B. W. O'Dwyer and Richard Davis have supported the theory that the two games have some common origins. Other Australian historians, including Geoffrey Blainey, Leonie Sandercock and Ian Turner have rejected any such connection,^[1] emphasising instead the influence of rugby football and other other games emanating from English public schools. Many sources also suggest that the Australian Aboriginal game of Marn Grook was an influence on Australian rules.

In 1843, Irish settlers celebrating Saint Patrick's Day in South Australia played some kind of football.^[2] Since none of the modern football games had been codified at the time, the match was most likely a traditional form of football, such as caid. Patrick O'Farrell has pointed out that another Irish sport with ancient origins, hurling — which has similar rules to Gaelic football — was played in Australia as early as the 1840s, and may also have been an influence on the Australian game.^[3]

B. W. O'Dwyer suggested that there is circumstantial evidence that traditional Irish games influenced the founders of Australian rules, when the game was codified by Tom Wills and others at Melbourne, in the Colony of Victoria in 1858–59.^[4] O'Dwyer argued that both Gaelic football and Australian rules are distinct from other codes in elements such as the lack of limitations on the direction of ball movement — the absence of an offside rule. According to O'Dwyer:

These are all elements of Irish football. There were several variations of Irish football in existence, normally without the benefit of rulebooks, but the central tradition in Ireland was in the direction of the relatively new game [i.e. rugby]...adapted and shaped within the perimeters of the ancient Irish game of hurling... [These rules] later became embedded in Gaelic football. Their presence in Victorian football may be accounted for in terms of a formative influence being exerted by men familiar with and no doubt playing the Irish game. It is not that they were introduced into the game from that motive [i.e. emulating Irish games]; it was rather a case of particular needs being met...^[5]

However, it has not been shown that the need to bounce or solo (toe-kick) the ball while running and punching the ball (hand-passing) rather than throwing it were also elements of caid. For example, the requirement that players bounce the ball, while running, was not in the first Australian code, the 1859 rules drafted by Wills and other members of the Melbourne Football Club. There is no conclusive evidence to prove a direct influence of caid on Australian rules football.

Another theory suggests that a relationship may have originated from the opposite direction: Archbishop Thomas Croke, one of the founders of the GAA, was the second Catholic Bishop of Auckland, and lived in New Zealand in 1870-74. As a result of the New Zealand gold rushes of the 1860s, there were many Australian-born settlers in New Zealand, and Victorian rules was popular there at the time. Croke therefore had an opportunity to witness the Australian game being played .

The first GAA football games of the 1880s allowed players to grab or push each other, similar to the Australian rules version of tackling. However, this was soon barred from the Irish game. If either code was influenced by each other, from the 1880s they developed and diverged in isolation.

In 1967, following approaches from Australian rules authorities, there was a series of games between an Irish representative team and an Australian team, under various sets of hybrid, compromise rules. In 1984, the first official representative matches of International rules football were played, and the Ireland international rules football team now plays the Australian team annually each October.

Since the 1980s, some Gaelic players, such as Jim Stynes and Tadhg Kennelly, have been recruited by professional Australian Football League (AFL) clubs and have had lengthy careers with them.

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