Tom Wills

Template:Short description Template:About Template:Good article Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use Australian English Template:Infobox person Thomas Wentworth Wills (19 August 1835 – 2 May 1880) was an Australian sportsman who is credited with being Australia's first cricketer of significance and a founder of Australian rules football. Born in the British penal colony of New South Wales to a wealthy family descended from convicts, Wills grew up in the bush on stations owned by his father, the squatter and politician Horatio Wills, in what is now the state of Victoria. As a child, he befriended local Aboriginal people, learning their language and customs. Aged 14, Wills went to England to attend Rugby School, where he became captain of its cricket team and played an early version of rugby football. After Rugby, Wills represented Cambridge University in the annual cricket match against Oxford, and played at first-class level for Kent and the Marylebone Cricket Club. An athletic bowling all-rounder with tactical nous, he was regarded as one of the finest young cricketers in England.

Returning to Victoria in 1856, Wills achieved Australia-wide stardom captaining the Victoria cricket team to repeated victories in intercolonial matches. He played for the Melbourne Cricket Club but often clashed with its administrators, his larrikin streak and defections to rival clubs straining their relationship. In 1858, seeking a winter pastime for cricketers, he called for the formation of a "foot-ball club" with a "code of laws". He captained a Melbourne side that winter, and in 1859 co-wrote its laws—the basis of Australian rules. Over their careers, he and his cousin H. C. A. Harrison further developed the game as players, umpires and administrators. In 1861, at the height of his fame, Wills went to outback Queensland to help run a new family station. Soon after his arrival, his father and 18 station personnel were killed in Australia's largest massacre of colonists by Aboriginal people. Wills survived and returned to Victoria in 1864, and in 1866–67, he led an Aboriginal cricket team on an Australian tour as its captain-coach.

In a career marked by controversy, Wills subverted cricket's amateur-professional divide, and was accused of popularising intimidatory tactics, such as the head-high bouncer. He also earned a reputation for bending sporting rules to the point of cheating, in particular throwing. This he boasted about, and in 1872 he became the first cricketer to be called in a top-class Australian match. Dropped from the Victorian team, Wills failed in an 1876 comeback attempt, by which time he was considered a relic of a bygone era.Template:Sfn During this period, he supported Australia's first organised women's cricket team—the only prominent male cricketer to do so. His final years were characterised by social alienation, flights from creditors, and heavy drinking, likely as a means of numbing post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms that resulted from the massacre. In 1880, suffering from delirium tremens, Wills fatally stabbed himself in the heart.

Australia's first sporting celebrity, Wills fell into obscurity after his death, but has undergone a revival in Australian culture since the 1980s. Today he is described as an archetypal tragic sports hero and as a symbol of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. He has also become the central figure in "football's history wars"—an ongoing dispute over whether Marn Grook, an Aboriginal ball game, influenced early Australian rules. According to biographer Greg de Moore, Wills "stands alone in all his absurdity, his cracked egalitarian heroism and his fatal self-destructiveness—the finest cricketer and footballer of the age".Template:Sfn

Family and early years

File:William Charles Wentworth, by Thomas Woolner (1825-1892).tif

Wills's middle name comes from his childhood role model William Wentworth, the statesman, explorer and "fighter for the rights of the Australian born".Template:Sfn

Wills was born on 19 August 1835 on the Molonglo PlainTemplate:Ref label near modern-day Canberra, in the British penal colony (now the Australian state) of New South Wales, as the elder childTemplate:Ref label of Horatio and Elizabeth (née McGuire) Wills.Template:Sfn Tom was a third-generation Australian of convict descent: his mother's parents were Irish convicts, and his paternal grandfather Edward was an English highwayman whose death sentence for armed robbery was commuted to transportation, arriving in Botany Bay aboard the "hell ship" Template:Ship in 1799.Template:Sfnm Granted a conditional pardon in 1803, Edward became rich through mercantile activity in Sydney with his free wife Sarah (née Harding).Template:Sfn He died in 1811, five months before Horatio's birth, and Sarah remarried to convict George Howe, owner of Australia's first newspaper, The Sydney Gazette.Template:Sfn Mainly self-educated, Horatio worked in the Gazette office from a young age, rising to become editor in 1832, the same year he met Elizabeth, an orphan from Parramatta. They married in December 1833.Template:Sfn Seventeen months after his birth, Tom was baptised Thomas Wentworth Wills in St Andrew's, Sydney, after statesman William Wentworth.Template:Sfn Drawing on Wentworth's pro-currency writings and the emancipist cause, Horatio, in his nationalist journal The Currency Lad (1832–33), made the first call for an Australian republic.Template:Sfn

File:Mount William as Seen from Mount Dryden.jpg

Wills grew up amongst Aboriginal clans in the Mount William area of the Grampians, shown in this 19th-century painting by Eugene von Guérard.

Horatio turned to pastoralism in the mid-1830s and moved with his family to the sheep run Burra Burra on the Molonglo River, near Captains Flat.Template:Sfnm Tom was athletic from a young age but also prone to illness, his parents at one stage "almost [despairing] of his recovery".Template:Sfnm In 1840, in light of Thomas Mitchell's account of "Australia Felix", the Willses overlanded south with shepherds and their families to the Grampians in the Port Phillip District (now the state of Victoria). After squatting by Mount William, they moved a few miles north through the foothills of Mount Ararat, named so by Horatio because "like the Ark, we rested there".Template:Sfnm Horatio went through a period of intense religiosity while in the Grampians; at times his diary descends into incantation, "perhaps even madness", according to scholars.Template:Sfnm He implored himself and Tom to base their lives upon the Gospel of John.Template:Sfn

Living in tents, the Wills family settled a large property named Lexington (near present-day Moyston) in an area used by Djab wurrung Aboriginal clans as a meeting place.Template:Sfnm According to family members, Tom, as one of the few white children in the area, "was thrown much into the companionship of aborigines".Template:Sfn In an account of corroborees from childhood, his cousin H. C. A. HarrisonTemplate:Ref label remembered Tom's ability to learn Aboriginal songs, mimic their voice and gestures, and "speak their language as fluently as they did themselves, much to their delight."Template:Sfn He may have also played Aboriginal sports.Template:Sfn Horatio wrote fondly of his son's kinship with Aboriginal people, and allowed local clans to live and hunt on Lexington.Template:Sfnm However, George Augustus Robinson, the district's Protector of Aborigines, implicated Horatio and other local settlers in the murder of Aboriginal people. Horatio blamed "distant predatory tribes" for provoking hostilities in the area, and the closest he came to admitting that he had killed Aboriginal people was in a letter to Governor Charles La Trobe: "... we shall be compelled in self defence to measures that may involve us in unpleasant consequences".Template:Sfn

Tom's first sibling, Emily, was born on Christmas Day 1842.Template:Sfn In 1846 Wills began attendance at William Brickwood's School in Melbourne, where he lived with Horatio's brother Thomas (Tom's namesakeTemplate:Sfn), a Victorian separatist and son-in-law of the Wills family's partner in the shipping trade, convict Mary Reibey.Template:Sfnm Tom played in his first cricket matches at school and came in contact with the Melbourne Cricket Club through Brickwood, the club's vice-president.Template:Sfn By 1849, the year Wills's schooling in Melbourne ended, his family had grown to include brothers Cedric, Horace and Egbert.Template:Sfn Horatio had ambitious plans for the education of his children, especially Tom:Template:Sfn Template:Blockquote

England

Rugby School

Template:Multiple image Wills's father sent him to England in February 1850, aged fourteen, to attend Rugby School, then the most prestigious school in the country.Template:Sfn In his scheme for his children, Horatio wanted Tom to go on to study law at the University of Cambridge and return to Australia as a "professional man of eminence".Template:Sfn Tom arrived in London after a five-month sea voyage. There, during school holidays, he stayed with his paternal aunt Sarah, who moved from Sydney after the death of her first husband, convict William Redfern.Template:Sfn

Reforms enacted by famed headmaster Thomas Arnold made Rugby the crucible of muscular Christianity, a "cult of athleticism" into which Wills was inculcated.Template:Sfn Wills took up cricket within a week of entering Evans House.Template:Sfn At first he bowled underhand, but it was considered outdated, so he tried roundarm bowling. He clean bowled a batsman with his first ball using this style and declared: "I felt I was a bowler."Template:Sfn Wills soon topped all of his house's cricket statistics.Template:Sfn At bat he was a "punisher" with a sound defence; however, in an era when stylish stroke-play was expected of amateurs, Wills was said to have no style at all.Template:Sfnm In April 1852, aged sixteen, he joined the Rugby School XI, and on his debut at Lord's against the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) a few months later, he took a match-high 12 wickets.Template:Sfn While his bowling proved vital that year in establishing Rugby as the greatest public school in English cricket,Template:Sfn anonymous critics in the press stated that he ought to be no-balled for throwing. Rugby coach John Lillywhite, considered an authority on bowling, came to his protégé's defence, rescuing him from further scandal.Template:Sfnm Wills went on to play with, and attracted praise from the leading cricketers of the age, including Alfred Mynn.<ref name="bio" /> He ended 1853 with the season's best bowling average,Template:Sfn and in 1854 his hero William Clarke invited him to join the All-England Eleven, but he remained at school. The next year, he became Rugby XI captain.Template:Sfnm

Template:Quote box Like other English public schools, Rugby had evolved its own variant of football.Template:Sfn The game in Wills's era—a rough and highly defensive struggle often involving hundreds of boys—was confined to a competition amongst the houses.Template:Sfnm Spanning his school years, Wills is one of the few players whose on-field exploits feature in the newspapers' otherwise brief match reports.Template:Sfn His creative play and "eel-like agility" baffled the opposition, and his penchant for theatrics endeared him to the crowds.Template:Sfn One journalist noted his use of "slimy tricks", a possible early reference to his gamesmanship.Template:Sfn As a "dodger" in the forward line who served his house's kicker, he took long and accurate shots at goal.Template:Sfnm Wills also shone in the school's annual athletics carnival and frequently won the long-distance running game Hare and Hounds.Template:Sfn

Wills cut a dashing figure with "impossibly wavy" hair and blue, almond-shaped eyes that "[burnt] with a pale light".Template:Sfn By age 16 at 5'8" he had already outgrown his father.Template:Sfn In Lillywhite's Guide a few years later he measured in at 5'10" and it was written that "few athletes can boast of a more muscular and well-developed frame".<ref name="bio">Template:Cite wikisource</ref>

Consumed by sport, Wills fell behind in academics, much to his father's chagrin.Template:Sfn One schoolmate recalled that he "could not bring himself to study for professional work" after "having led a sort of nomadic life when a youth in Australia".Template:Sfn Suffering from homesickness, Wills decorated his study with objects to remind him of Australia, including Aboriginal weapons.Template:Sfn In a letter to Tom, Horatio informed him that his childhood friends, the Djab wurrung, often spoke about him: "They told me to send you up to them as soon as you came back."Template:Sfn

Libertine cricketer

In June 1855, nearing his 20th birthday, Wills finished his schooling. Hailed as Rugby's exemplar sportsman, his status as a cricketer had come to define him in the eyes of others.Template:Sfn In a farewell tribute, fellow students referred to him simply as "the school bowler".Template:Sfn

After leaving Rugby, and with a steady supply of money from his father, Wills roamed Britain in pursuit of cricketing pleasure. Regarded as "one of the most promising cricketers in the kingdom",Template:Sfn he played with royalty, made first-class appearances for the MCC, Kent County Cricket Club, and various Gentlemen sides, and also fell in with the I Zingari—the "gypsy lords of English cricket"—a club of wealthy amateurs known for their exotic costumes and hedonistic lifestyles.Template:Sfnm Against Horatio's wishes, Tom, having failed to matriculate, did not continue his studies at Cambridge, but played for the university's cricket team (as well as Magdalene College), most notably against Oxford in 1856 when rules barring non-students from playing in the University Match were ignored, Cambridge claiming to be "one man short".Template:Sfn In June, Wills played cricket at Rugby School for the last time, representing the MCC alongside Lord Guernsey, the Earl of Winterton, and Charles du Cane, governor-to-be of Tasmania.Template:Sfn Following a month of cricket in Ireland, Wills, at the behest of Horatio, returned to England to prepare for his journey home to Australia.Template:Sfn

The last eighteen months had exposed Wills to "the richest sporting experience on earth".Template:Sfn His six years in England charted a way of life—one of drinking, reckless spending and playing games—that he would follow until his death.Template:Sfn

Colonial hero

Wills returned to Australia aboard the Oneida steamship, arriving in Melbourne on 23 December 1856. The minor port city of his youth had risen to world renown as the booming financial centre of the Victorian gold rush.Template:Sfn Horatio, now a member of the Legislative Assembly in the Victorian Parliament, lived on "Belle Vue", a farm at Point Henry near Geelong, the Wills' family home since 1853.Template:Sfn In his first summer back in Melbourne, Wills stayed with his extended family, the Harrisons, at their home on Victoria Parade, and entered a Collins Street law firm to appease his father, but he seems never to have practised; the few comments he made about law suggest it meant little to him.Template:Sfn "Tom was no dunce", writes Greg de Moore. He was "negotiating a path to greatness."Template:Sfn

The Australian colonies were described as "cricket mad" in the 1850s, and Victorians, in particular, were said to live "in an atmosphere of cricket".Template:Sfnm Intercolonial contests, first held in 1851, provided an outlet for the at times intense rivalry between Victoria and New South Wales. With his reputation preceding him, Wills bore Victoria's hopes of winning its first match against the elder colony.Template:Sfn William Hammersley, a former acquaintance in England and now captain of the Victoria XI, recalled Wills's first appearance on the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) for a trial match, staged one week after his return:<ref name="bio" /> Template:Blockquote

Wills won the match for his side with a top score of 57 not out,Template:Sfn and The Age said of his playing style and entertaining ability that "there has not been a more amusing scene on this ground".<ref>"Eleven of Victoria v. A Selected Eleven". The Age (Melbourne). 6 January 1857. p. 3. Retrieved 6 January 2015.</ref> In the January 1857 intercolonial against New South Wales, held on the Domain in Sydney, Wills was the leading wicket-taker with ten victims, but failed with the bat. Bowling fast round-arm, the Victorians scoffed at the "antiquated" underhand action of their opponents. The latter style proved effective, however, giving New South Wales a 65-run win.Template:Sfnm Back in Victoria, Wills joined numerous clubs, including the provincial Corio Cricket Club, based in Geelong, and the elite Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC).Template:Sfn Although he had a greater affinity for Corio, the MCC maintained that Wills belonged to them, and took offence at his lack of loyalty to any one club.Template:Sfn In order to secure Wills in matches between the two teams, the MCC allowed Corio to field an extra five men to make up for his loss.Template:Sfn

File:Intercolonial Cricket Match Victoria New South Wales 1858.jpg

Wills is shown preparing to bowl in an intercolonial match between Victoria and New South Wales, MCG, 1858. He became "an instant colonial hero" after captaining Victoria to its first victory.Template:Sfn

Parliament and business came to a standstill in Melbourne for the January 1858 intercolonial match between Victoria and New South Wales, held at the MCG. Captaining Victoria, Wills took 8 wickets, the most of his side, and on the second day, batting in the middle order, a ball hit an imperfection in the pitch and knocked him unconscious. He recovered, played on for two hours, and won the match at day's end with a top score of 49*.Template:Sfn The crowd rushed the field and chaired Wills off in triumph, and victory celebrations lasted for several days throughout the colony.Template:Sfnm Now a household name and the darling of Melbourne's elite, Wills was proclaimed "the greatest cricketer in the land".Template:Sfn

Although Wills enjoyed his lofty amateur status, he liked to socialise with and support working class professional cricketers—an egalitarian attitude that sometimes led to conflict with sporting officialdom but endeared him to the common man.Template:Sfn Wills's allegiance to professionals was highlighted by an incident in Tasmania in February 1858 when the Launceston Cricket Club shunned professional members of his touring Victorian side. Infuriated, he spoke out against being "forsaken" in a "strange land". One week later, during a game in Hobart, Wills earned the locals' ire as he "[jumped] about exultantly" after maiming a Tasmanian batsman with a spell of hostile fast bowling.Template:Sfn

Wills served as the MCC's secretary during the 1857–58 season.Template:Sfn It was a role in which he proved to be chaotic and disorganised. MCC delegates took issue with Wills's "continued non-attendance" at meetings, and when the club fell into debt, his poor administrative skills were blamed.Template:Sfn In mid-1858, he acted on year-long threats and deserted the club, leaving its records and amenities in disarray; to this day, the only MCC minutes that cannot be found date from his secretaryship.Template:Sfn A lasting tension existed between Wills and the MCC's inner circle. According to Martin Flanagan, "It was a relationship which couldn't last as Wills only knew one way—his own."Template:Sfn

Football pioneer

Template:Further Template:Multiple image Wills was a compulsive writer to the press on cricketing matters and in the late 1850s his letters sometimes appeared on a daily basis.Template:Sfn An agitator like his father, he used language "in the manner of a speaker declaiming forcefully from a platform".Template:Sfnm On 10 July 1858, the Melbourne-based Bell's Life in Victoria and Sporting Chronicle published a letter by Wills that is regarded as a catalyst for a new style of football, known today as Australian rules football.Template:Sfn Titled "Winter Practice", it begins:<ref>Bell's Life in Victoria, 10 July 1858.</ref> Template:Blockquote

In endeavouring to keep cricketers active during the off-season, Wills made the first public declaration of its kind in Australia: that football should be a regular and organised activity.Template:Sfnm Around this time he helped to foster football in Melbourne's schools.Template:Sfn The local headmasters, his collaborators, were inspired in large part by descriptions of football in Thomas Hughes' novel Tom Brown's School Days (1857), an account of life at Rugby School under the headship of Thomas Arnold.Template:Sfn Due to similarities between their sporting careers at Rugby, Wills has been called the "real-life embodiment" of Tom Brown, the novel's fictitious hero.Template:Sfn

Wills's letter was alluded to two weeks after its publication in an advertisement posted by his friend, professional cricketer and publican Jerry Bryant, for a "scratch match" held adjacent to the MCG at the Richmond Paddock. The first of several kickabouts held that year involving Wills, Bryant and other Melbourne cricketers,Template:Sfnm it was described by one participant as "football Babel"; a "short code of rules" were to be drawn up afterwards, however this does not seem to have occurred.Template:Sfnm Another landmark game, played without fixed rules over three Saturdays and co-umpired by Wills and teacher Dr John Macadam, began on the same site on 7 August between forty Scotch College students and a like number from Melbourne Grammar.Template:Sfn The two schools have since competed annually.Template:Sfn Wills emerged as the standout figure in accounts of Melbourne football in 1858.Template:Sfn These early experimental games were more rugby-like than anything else—low-scoring, low-to-the-ground "gladiatorial" tussles.Template:Sfnm The last recorded match of the year is the subject of the first known Australian football poem, published in Punch. Wills, the only player named, is reified as "the Melbourne chief", leading his men to victory against a side from South Yarra.Template:Sfnm

Following a scratch match at the start of the 1859 football season, the Melbourne Football Club officially came into being on 14 May.Template:Sfn Three days later, Wills and three other members—Hammersley, journalist J. B. Thompson and teacher Thomas H. Smith—met near the MCG at the Parade Hotel, owned by Bryant, to devise and codify the club's rules.Template:Sfn The men went over the rules of four English schools; Hammersley recalled Wills's preference for the Rugby game, but it was found to be confusing and too violent.Template:Sfn Subsequently, they rejected common features such as "hacking" (shin-kicking) and produced a signed document listing ten simple rules suited to grown men and Australian conditions.Template:Sfn Heading the list of signatories, Wills, too, saw the need for compromise.Template:Sfn He wrote to his brother Horace: "Rugby was not a game for us, we wanted a winter pastime but men could be harmed if thrown on the ground so we thought differently."Template:Sfn Thompson and Hammersley's promotion of the new code, together with Wills's star power, encouraged the spread of football throughout Victoria.

Height of celebrity

File:Tom Wills Victorian cricketers 1859.jpg

Wills (far right) with professional members of the Victoria XI, 1859. He preferred the company of professionals in an era when they were shunned by amateurs of his social stature.

After falling out with the MCC, Wills moved freely about Victoria, playing for any club of his choosing. He became president of Collingwood and vice-president of Richmond, raising the standard of the latter club's play to make it the best in the colony.Template:Sfn There were calls to ban Wills from certain club matches, for his unexpected appearance in a side, often as a late inclusion, altered the odds to such an extent that bookmakers felt compelled to declare "all bets are off". All clubs still coveted Wills when it suited their cause, and scarcely a day passed when he did not play or practice cricket.Template:Sfn

Wills retained the Victorian captaincy for the January 1859 intercolonial against New South Wales, held at the Domain. Despite breaking his right middle finger on day one while attempting a catch, Wills top scored in the first innings with 15* and took 5/24 and 6/25, carrying Victoria to an upset win.Template:Sfn Later that year, he resigned from the intercolonial match committee in protest after Thompson publicly chastised him for not attending practice ahead of the next match against New South Wales. During a follow-up practice match, players struggled in the day's heat, and ignoring calls to retire, Wills suffered a near-fatal sunstroke. Hammersley wrote that Wills felt obliged to perform for the large crowd that had gathered to watch him.Template:Sfn Over 25,000 people attended the MCG in February 1860 to see Victoria, captained by Wills, play New South Wales. Wills bowled unchanged in both innings, taking 6/23 and 3/16, and top scored with 20*. Victoria won by 69 runs.Template:Sfn

The Melbourne media gave Wills the sobriquet "Great Gun of the Colony".Template:Sfn A British correspondent called him "a cricketer born".<ref>"Cricket in the South". The Australian Mail. 14 May 1861. p. 1.</ref> The Sydney press, championing Wills as a native New South Welshman, agreed:<ref>"Grand National Cricket Match". The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney). 27 January 1859. p. 12. Retrieved 7 August 2015.</ref> Template:Blockquote

Template:Quote box Wills remained an influential figure in Australian football from 1859 to 1860.Template:Sfn While he fought for the adoption of several Rugby School customs—such as a free kick for marking, the use of an oval-shaped ball, and (unsuccessfully) a crossbar—he pushed the game in new directions as a captain and tactician. During an 1860 match, he used positional play to exploit the code's lack of an offside law, at which point, according to James Coventry, "the full potential of the sport started to be realised".Template:Sfn

At Wills's insistence, his cousin H. C. A. Harrison took up football in 1859, and quickly became a leading player and captain.Template:Sfn Harrison venerated Wills, terming him "the beau-ideal of an athlete"—high praise given Harrison's status as the champion runner of Victoria.Template:Sfnm Their presence in Geelong fuelled a local craze for football and helped ensure during the game's early years the supremacy of the Geelong Football Club, which Wills captained in 1860.Template:Sfn In an era when players moved freely among clubs, he still occasionally captained, and served on the committee of Melbourne, and in 1860, became the first captain and secretary of the Richmond Football Club (no connection with today's AFL club).Template:Sfn The code underwent revisions around this time, principally in response to the on-field actions of dominant players. "And there were none more dominant than Wills and Harrison", writes Coventry.Template:Sfnm

Queensland

File:Horatio Wills portrait.jpg

Horatio Wills

With plans underway for the first tour of Australia by an English cricket team, Wills announced his retirement from sport. At his father's beckoning, Wills agreed to leave Victoria to help found and manage a new family station, Cullin-la-ringo, on the Nogoa River in outback Queensland.Template:Sfn He prepared for six months in country Victoria where learnt the crafts of a squatter.Template:Sfn In his will, Horatio—showing a "deep understanding" of Tom's personality—wrote that his son would be removed from the station and receive a diminished inheritance in the event of "misconducting himself" as manager.Template:Sfn

In January 1861, Tom, Horatio and a party of employees and their families travelled by ship to Brisbane, disembarked in Moreton Bay, and then, with livestock and supplies, set out on an eight-month trek through Queensland's rugged interior.Template:Sfn Food was scarce and Tom hunted native game to fend off starvation.Template:Sfn They suffered many other hardships and even death when, in Toowoomba, one of Horatio's men drowned.Template:Sfn On the Darling Downs over 10,000 sheep were collected.Template:Sfn Hitherto the largest group of colonists to enter the area, the Wills party drew the attention of local Aboriginal people.Template:Sfn Wary of what he called the "perpetual war between the whites and blacks" of Central Queensland, Horatio sought to avoid conflict.Template:Sfn The party reached Cullin-la-ringo, situated on Gayiri Aboriginal land, in early October, and proceeded to set up camp.Template:Sfn

Cullin-la-ringo massacre

File:Wills Tragedy 1861.jpg

The Wills Tragedy, 1861 shows neighbouring colonists collecting and burying the dead at Cullin-la-ringo.

On 17 October, Horatio and 18 of his party died in Australia's deadliest massacre of colonists by Aboriginal people.Template:Sfnm Tom was away from the property at the time, having been sent with two stockmen to collect supplies the party left en route. He returned several days later to a scene of devastation.Template:Sfn Despairing and vengeful, Wills first wrote to Harrison in Melbourne, listing for him the victims and requesting that he send replacements: "men that will shoot every black they see".Template:Sfn Over the following weeks, police, native police and vigilante groups from neighbouring stations committed a series of counter-massacres; estimates of the total number of Gayiri killed range from 109 to 370.<ref name="Jackson" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

While it is unknown whether Wills participated in these reprisals, the possibility was raised in 2021 after a report that an anonymous Chicago Tribune article, dating from 1895, quotes him as saying that, during a raid on an Aboriginal camp, he and other avengers "killed all in sight".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Flanagan discredited most of the article as lurid fiction rooted in racism, but noted one passage suggesting insider knowledge, concluding it could not be dismissed outright.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Also in 2021, it was disclosed that Wills family historian Terry Wills Cooke had written privately in 2005 of oral history within the family that suggested Wills joined the reprisals. Wills Cooke reversed this in 2021, stating that the oral history did not support any such involvement.<ref name="Jackson">Template:Cite web</ref>

Following the massacre, conflicting reports reached the outside world and for a time it was feared that Wills had died.Template:Sfn In the press, Horatio was accused of ignoring warnings and allowing Aboriginal people to encroach on his property.Template:Sfn The retribution was also deemed excessive.Template:Sfn Tom vehemently defended his father against any perceived criticism.Template:Sfn Privately, in his letter to Harrison, he admitted, "if we had used common precaution all would have been well".Template:Sfn It was later revealed that, prior to leaving the camp, Tom "had a sort of presentiment" and advised those remaining to arm themselves, including Horatio, who assured him "It was only his boyish fears".Template:Sfn The Queensland press, still in the wake of the massacre, suggested that Wills, "now a Queenslander", be approached to captain the colony's cricket team.Template:Sfn

Different reasons were put forward at the time to account for the Wills tragedy.Template:Sfn For many colonists, it confirmed the popular belief that Aboriginal people were bloodthirsty savages.Template:Sfn Tom never articulated his version of events in writing, but his brother Cedric wrote years later that it was an act of revenge for an attack made on local Aboriginal people by Jesse Gregson, a neighbouring squatter whom they mistook to be Horatio. Cedric quoted Tom as saying, "If the truth is ever known, you will find that it was through Gregson shooting those blacks; that was the cause of the murder."Template:Sfn

In the years following the massacre, Wills experienced flashbacks, nightmares and an irritable heart—symptoms of what is now known as posttraumatic stress disorder. Having eagerly participated in the drinking culture of colonial sport, he increased his alcohol consumption in a likely attempt to blot out memories and alleviate sleep disturbance.Template:Sfnm Wills's sister Emily wrote of him two months after the massacre: "He says he never felt so changed in the whole course of his life".Template:Sfn

Riot and expulsion

File:Tom Wills carte de visite.jpg

Wills, Template:Circa

Wills made a vow over Horatio's grave to remain on Cullin-la-ringo and make it "the pride of Queensland"—words that, according to de Moore, "enshrined and imprisoned" Tom as the new head of the family.Template:Sfnm He began to rebuild the station pending the arrival of his uncle-in-law, William Roope, who took control of Cullin-la-ringo in December 1861, but soon left due to Wills's "exceedingly ill" treatment of him.Template:Sfn Hypervigilant, Wills slept only three hours a night with a rifle within reach and watched for signs of another Aboriginal attack.Template:Sfnm Bushrangers and wildlife also posed threats, and for several weeks "sandy blight" left him half-blind.Template:Sfn Short of station hands, he at times led the solitary life of a shepherd. "There is no one up here to love old Tom but the gum trees and the little lambs", he wrote to his mother.Template:Sfn

He went to Sydney in January 1863 to captain Victoria against New South Wales on the Domain. A run out dispute led to Wills's decision to abandon play. A crowd riot ensued, with the "cabbage tree mob" stoning and beating the Victorians with sticks; Wills received a "severe blow" in the face from a stone before escaping the ground with his men under police escort. Despite this, and with only a nine-man batting order due to William Greaves and George Marshall having fled the city, Wills agreed to resume play the next day. He took 8 wickets and top scored in both innings (25* and 17*), but it was not enough to secure victory. The Melbourne media castigated Wills for allowing the game to resume, and Sydneysiders called him a turncoat for reneging on an earlier promise to play for New South Wales. He denied all accusations and wrote in an angry letter to The Sydney Herald: "I for one do not think that Victoria will ever send an Eleven up here again."Template:Sfn Back in Victoria, he became engaged to Julie Anderson, a squatter's daughter. He seems to have done so to meet familial expectations. Even so, he was chided by his siblings for prioritising cricket over courtship.Template:Sfn In May, as his mother grew concerned over his neglect of Cullin-la-ringo, Wills extended his sojourn south to play football in Geelong.Template:Sfn

Wills finally returned to Queensland in May and was sworn in as a Justice of the Peace upon arrival in Brisbane.Template:Sfn Over the next few months at Cullin-la-ringo, he reported to the press at least three fatal Aboriginal attacks on local colonists, a shepherd of his numbering among the victims.Template:Sfn He accosted government officials for failing to send a native police detachment to his station for protection, and scorned city-dwellers for sympathising with the plight of Aboriginal people in the Nogoa region.Template:Sfnm With the cricket season approaching, Wills agreed to captain Queensland against New South Wales, and then left the colony to lead a Victoria XXII at the MCG against George Parr's All-England Eleven.Template:Sfn In awe of his 1,800 mile dash across the continent to play cricket, the English thought it a madman's journey.Template:Sfn Wills arrived on the final day of the match to a rapturous reception, and went in as a substitute fielder.<ref>"Grand International Cricket Match". The Star (Ballarat). 6 January 1864. p. 2. Retrieved 25 January 2016.</ref> He then joined the visitors on their Victorian tour.Template:Sfn

The 1863–64 season saw Wills's engagement to Anderson collapse, possibly due to his womanising, and the trustees of Cullin-la-ringo accused him of mismanaging the property, in part by squandering family finances on alcohol while claiming it as station expenditure.Template:Sfnm They demanded that he stay in Victoria to answer for the property's runaway debt. In response, Wills left Australia to join Parr's XI on a month-long tour of New Zealand.Template:Sfn Initially standing in as umpire, he went on to captain local teams against the English, and filled the same role for a Victoria XXII at the end of the tour in Melbourne.Template:Sfn He faced the trustees soon after. With his mother's reluctant approval, they dismissed him from Cullin-la-ringo, thus fulfilling the premonition in Horatio's will.Template:Sfn

Return to Victoria

File:Melbourne Geelong Football.jpg

Football match between Geelong and Melbourne. The two clubs fought over which side "owned" Wills.

Wills moved to the family home in Geelong. Always a black sheep of sorts, he became increasingly estranged from his mother and sister Emily from this point on.Template:Sfnm Family letters from mid-1864 reveal that Wills had a "wife"—a "bad woman", according to Emily. It is likely a reference to the already-married Sarah Barbor (née Duff). Born in Dublin, she is a mysterious figure, but is known to have remained Wills's lifelong partner. The de facto nature of their relationship, and even Barbor's existence, were probably kept secret from Wills's mother for a number of years.Template:Sfn

Throughout the 1865 football season, Wills played for and served on the committees of Melbourne and Geelong, then the game's most powerful clubs. At the end of a winter beset with public brawls over which team "owned" him, Wills moved to Geelong for the remainder of his career, prompting Bell's Life in Victoria to report that Melbourne had lost "the finest leader of men on the football field".Template:Sfn The following year, when the running bounce and other rules were formalised at a meeting of club delegates under Harrison's chairmanship, Wills was not present; his move to Geelong had cut him off from the rule-making process in Melbourne.Template:Sfnm

Intercolonials between Victoria and New South Wales resumed at the MCG on Boxing Day 1865, nearly three years since the Sydney riot. Sam Cosstick, William Caffyn and other Victorian professionals defected to the rival colony due to pay disputes with the MCC. Wills, leading the weakened Victorian side to an against-the-odds win, took 6 wickets and contributed 58—the first half century in Australian first-class cricket—to 285, a record intercolonial total.Template:Sfn Allegations that Wills cheated his way to victory failed to endanger his status as a folk hero and "a source of eternal hope" for Victoria.Template:Sfnm

Aboriginal cricket team

File:Aboriginal cricket team at MCG in 1867.jpg

Wills (back row, center) with the Aboriginal XI outside the MCC pavilion of the MCG, December 1866

In May 1866, plans were made by the MCC to host and play against an Aboriginal team from Victoria's Western District.Template:Sfnm The motive behind the match, set for Boxing Day of that year, was a financial one, and in August, Wills agreed to coach the Aboriginal players. Wills's reasons for accepting the role remain a mystery, but a growing need for money likely influenced his decision.Template:Sfn The enterprise was to mark the beginning of his transition from amateur to professional sportsman.Template:Sfn

Wills travelled inland in November to gather the players from Edenhope and Harrow, where they worked as station hands.Template:Sfn One of their employers, William Hayman, had helped train them in cricket over the preceding few years, and acted as the team's manager and "protector".Template:Sfn Mostly Jardwadjali men, they shared common vocabulary with the neighbouring Djab wurrung people, which enabled Wills to coach them in the Aboriginal language he learnt as a child.Template:Sfn From their training ground at Lake Wallace, Wills, in a "tactical strike", boasted to the Melbourne press of the Aboriginal players' skills, especially the batsmanship of Unamurriman, commonly known as Mullagh.Template:Ref label Unsettled by Wills's claims, the MCC strengthened the ranks of its Boxing Day side with non-members.Template:Sfnm This drew widespread criticism, and public sympathy was with the Aboriginal players when they arrived in Melbourne in late December. Over 10,000 spectators went to the MCG to see them play.<ref>"M.C.C. vs. Ten Aboriginals with T. W. Wills". Bell's Life in Victoria and Sporting Chronicle (Melbourne). 29 December 1866. p. 2. Retrieved 25 January 2016.</ref> Captained by Wills, they lost against the MCC's reinforced side, but won unanimous praise for their performance. Wills afterwards accused the MCC of "treachery".Template:Sfn

The team provoked much public discussion over past mistreatment of Aboriginal people and future relations between the races.Template:Sfnm It is unknown what Wills and his Aboriginal teammates made of these broader social and political dimensions of the enterprise.Template:Sfn Some of Wills's contemporaries were shocked that he would associate with Aboriginal people in the shadow of his father's death.Template:Sfn Others, such as this contributor to The Empire, addressed him as a hero:Template:Sfn Template:Blockquote

File:Dick-a-Dick Tom Wills Melbourne Museum.jpg

A waddy owned by Dick-a-Dick (Jungunjinuke) next to a cricket ball owned by Wills, Melbourne Museum

Wills's role took on a symbolic significance: supporters and critics alike used his status as a 'native' (Australian-born colonist) to identify him with his 'native' (Indigenous) teammates, and he was also noted for speaking in "their own lingo".Template:Sfnm Jellico (Murrumgunarriman), the "team jester", joked to the press: "[Wills] too much along of us. He speak nothing now but blackfellow talk".Template:Sfn While Melburnians were enthralled by Wills and the Aboriginal team, the annual intercolonial between Victoria and New South Wales—usually the season highlight—failed to excite public interest, and Victoria's loss in Sydney was partly attributed to Wills's absence.Template:Sfn The Aboriginal players improved as they toured Victoria under his captaincy in January. After an easy win in Geelong, Wills took the team to "Belle Vue" to meet his mother.Template:Sfn Back in Melbourne, two members, Bullocky (Bullenchanach) and Cuzens (Yellana), joined Wills in representing Victoria against a Tasmanian XVI.Template:Sfn

File:A928127h.jpg

Wills's stint in Darlinghurst Gaol following his on-field arrest marked the decline of his role within the team.

In February 1867, they went to Sydney to begin an intercolonial and overseas tour.Template:Sfn Aware of the tour's lucrative potential, New South Wales captain Charles Lawrence sought to work his way into the team, first by inviting them to stay at his Manly Beach hotel.Template:Sfn When they played against his club at the Albert Ground in Redfern, policemen brought the game to an abrupt halt by entering the field and arresting Wills.Template:Sfn He and W. E. B. Gurnett, the tour promoter, had been vying to take over as manager, and Wills ended up in Darlinghurst Gaol for a breach of contract.Template:Sfn Within days of his release in March, Gurnett embezzled some of the funds and left the team stranded in Sydney, dashing any hopes of a trip overseas and confirming Wills's suspicion that he was a con artist.Template:Sfn Lawrence set up a "benefit" match for the team and joined them on their travels outside Sydney. By the end of the New South Wales leg of the tour, he had usurped Wills as captain.Template:Sfnm

No longer attracting significant crowds or media attention, they returned to the Western District in May; Lawrence stayed with the team while Wills went to Geelong to play football.Template:Sfn It has been said that, due to his drinking habit, Wills exercised a "bad influence" upon the players, four of whom died from illness during or soon after the tour; the inquest into one death, that of Watty (Bilvayarrimin), and a follow-up police report found evidence of alcohol abuse among the players.Template:Sfnm

The surviving members formed part of the Aboriginal XI which Lawrence took to England in 1868, making it the first Australian sports team to travel overseas.Template:Sfn Wills resented Lawrence for reviving the team without him; his exclusion from the landmark tour has been called the tragedy of his sporting career.Template:Sfnm

Ambiguous professional

File:William Handcock Tom Wills.jpg

Portrait of Wills in the colours of the MCC (William Handcock, 1870, National Sports Museum collection)

Without career prospects beyond sport, Wills joined the MCC as a professional at the start of the 1867–68 season; however, he was not openly referred to as such. Instead, the club devised the title of 'tutor' in order that he maintain the prestige of his amateur background.Template:Sfn

Played on the MCG, the December 1867 intercolonial between Victoria and New South Wales ended in a sound victory for the former, principally due to Wills's nine-wicket haul and Richard Wardill's century.Template:Sfn Wills had been Victoria's preferred captain for over a decade. Writing in his sports column, Hammersley claimed that, as a paid cricketer, Wills lacked "moral ascendancy" over amateurs.Template:Sfn When he lost the captaincy to Wardill, an amateur, on the eve of the March 1869 match against New South Wales, he refused to play under him, or, indeed, anyone else. The Victorians condemned Wills and resolved to go on without him, after which he retracted his decision not to play. This was the last intercolonial played on the Domain and Victoria recovered from Wardill's diamond duck to win by 78 runs. Wills scalped 7 wickets in a single innings.Template:Sfn

After the intercolonial, Wills announced that he would not play for Victoria again, even if the colony wanted him.Template:Sfn He planned to return to Cullin-la-ringo in early 1869, but his mother, still "very dissatisfied" with him, requested that he stay away from the station.Template:Sfn The MCC took him back and he continued to act as a tutor with the club.Template:Sfn Wills's former Aboriginal teammates, Mullagh and Cuzens, joined him at the MCC as paid bowlers.Template:Sfn

Wills's physical appearance had deteriorated; gaining weight, balding and generally unkempt, with "an alcoholic blush of his cheeks", he looked older than his years.Template:Sfnm Describing his body as "stiff" during a cricket match in 1870, he hinted, for the first time, that his talent was fading.Template:Sfn Nevertheless, his reputation as Australia's preeminent cricketer remained intact, with one journalist writing:<ref>"Intercolonial Cricket Match". Empire (Sydney). 10 April 1871. p. 3. Retrieved 12 April 2021.</ref>

No-ball plot and downfall

File:Tom Wills William Hammersley.jpg

Hammersley (standing), The Australasian's chief sportswriter, led a campaign to have Wills (seated) banned from intercolonial cricket.

Hardly a year had passed since Wills's return to Australia in 1856 without public comment on his suspect bowling action.Template:Sfn Such comments increased as he aged and turned professional, and by 1870, many former allies that had once colluded to protect him, including journalists and officials, accused him of deliberately throwing. Wills's fame and influence helped make him a "convenient caricature" of the cricketing villain, one that, his critics urged, ought to be no-balled for the good of the game in the colonies.Template:Sfn

In February 1870 at the MCG, Wills captained Victoria to a 265-run win over a New South Wales side featuring Twopenny (Jarrawuk), an Aboriginal paceman allegedly recruited by Lawrence as a foil to Wills's "chucks".Template:Sfn Comparing the two, the Melbourne press surmised: "Undoubtedly Wills throws sometimes, but there is some decency about it, some disguise."Template:Sfn In March, Victoria trounced a Tasmanian XVI in Launceston under Wills's leadership, though not without criticism of his bowling action.Template:Sfn Amid accusations that Wills had incited a "plague" of throwing in Australia, one-time ally Hammersley, now Melbourne's foremost sportswriter, emerged as his harshest critic.Template:Sfnm He accused Wills of resorting to throwing to maintain pace as he aged, and criticised him for introducing a type of bouncer designed to injure and intimidate batsmen.Template:Sfn The Australasian, Hammersley's newspaper, summarised Wills's modus operandi: "If I cannot hit your wicket or make you give a chance soon, I'll hit you and hurt you if I can. I'll frighten you out."Template:Sfn

In the face of a looming crisis in his career, Wills admitted to throwing in his 1870–71 Australian Cricketers' Guide, and in so doing taunted his enemies to stop him.Template:Sfn Nonetheless, he went on to captain Victoria in the March 1871 intercolonial against New South Wales, held at the Albert Ground. Wills's first innings top score of 39* was offset by his drunken behaviour in the field, and he seemed reluctant to bowl for fear of being called. Victoria won by 48 runs.Template:Sfn Not long after, Wills was no-balled for throwing for the first time in a club match. Rumour soon spread that the opposing club's owner had conspired with the umpire against Wills.Template:Sfn

A series of superb club cricket performances in February 1872—including a single innings ten-wicket haul for 9 runs against St Kilda—removed any doubt that Wills would play for Victoria in the next intercolonial against New South Wales, scheduled for March on the MCG.Template:Sfn Before the game, representatives from both colonies met and entered into a bilateral agreement designed to call Wills.Template:Sfn When he opened the bowling, Wills became the first cricketer to be called for throwing in a top-class Australian match. The umpire called him two more times in two overs, and he did not bowl again.Template:Sfn He was again no-balled when a Victorian side under his captaincy lost to a combined XIII from New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia late in 1872.Template:Sfn

Hammersley had seemingly triumphed in his campaign to have Wills banned from intercolonial cricket.Template:Sfn In an exchange of personal attacks in the press, Wills implied that Hammersley was an architect of the no-ball plot, and protested that he and other English colonists were out to oppress native-born Australians.Template:Sfnm Wills went on to threaten him with legal action. Hammersley closed:Template:Sfn Template:Blockquote

Grace and comeback attempt

File:WG Grace 1873.jpg

An 1873 caricature of W. G. Grace. In his obituaries, Wills was referred to as "the Grace of Australia".Template:Sfn

W. G. Grace, the Victorian era's most famous cricketer, brought an English team to Australia in 1873–74. Wills strove to play for Victoria against Grace and rival factions fought over his possible inclusion. Hammersley, a selector, ensured that he missed out.Template:Sfn Wills went on to tour with, and play against the Englishmen.Template:Sfn Irked by Wills's constant presence, Grace remarked that he seemed to regard himself as a representative of the whole of Australia.Template:Sfn It was assumed that, on his homeward journey, Grace would play a final match in the South Australian capital of Adelaide, but he bypassed the city when Kadina, a remote mining town in the Copper Triangle, offered him more money. Wills coached Kadina's miners and captained them against Grace's XI.Template:Sfn Played in an open, rock-strewn plain of baked earth, the game was deemed a farce. Wills made a pair and Grace later wrote of the "old Rugbeian" as a has-been.Template:Sfn Grace neglected to mention that Wills bowled him, ending with 6/28.Template:Sfn

In Geelong, Wills was still idolised, though he seemed discontented, seeking any chance to earn money through cricket in the major cities.Template:Sfn He maintained an interest in the development of football, what he called "the king of games".Template:Sfn He continued to suggest rule changes, such as the push in the back rule to curb injuries, and, as captain of Geelong, helped shape the sport's playing style.Template:Sfn Utilising the speed and skill of Geelong's young players, Wills devised an innovative game plan—what he called "scientific football"—based on passing and running into open space.Template:Sfn He pioneered another tactical manoeuvre in Ballarat by ordering his men to flood the backline to prevent the home side from scoring. Having enraged the crowd, he and his men incited them further by wasting time and deliberately kicking the ball out of bounds.Template:Sfn A few years later, in a rare act of diplomacy, Wills quelled tensions after a rival club used his "unchivalrous tactics" against Geelong.Template:Sfn He played his last football game in 1874.Template:Sfn

File:Bendigo Women's Cricket Team.jpg

The 1874 women's cricket team from Bendigo. Wills's endorsement of the team was at odds with the mockery and scorn they faced from the Melbourne press.

In April 1874, Australia's first organised women's cricket match took place in Bendigo, Victoria between two local sides, in aid of charity. One year later, they made offers to play in Melbourne, but these were declined amid abuse from the city's press, with one journalist stating: "Public sentiment appears to be so far from approving it, that the eccentric example of the [Bendigo team] is not likely to be followed elsewhere."<ref>"The Month". Illustrated Australian News for Home Readers (Melbourne). 19 April 1875. p. 50. Retrieved 7 August 2015.</ref> In response, and as secretary of Corio, Wills invited the team to play in Geelong. He was the only person in the colonies to extend such an invitation, and attempted to organise a local women's team to play them. Due to poor weather, the match was postponed until 1876, but by then, the Bendigo side had folded. Another decade would pass before women's cricket gained traction and recognition in Australia.Template:Sfn

After Wills's ejection from top-class cricket in 1872, the Victoria XI suffered three straight losses against New South Wales.Template:Sfn In his 1874–75 Australian Cricketers' Guide, Wills argued that Victoria needed a new captain. "No one reading his words could mistake its intent—what Victoria needed was Tom Wills", writes de Moore.Template:Sfn For the first time in years, Wills was shortlisted by Victorian selectors to appear in the next intercolonial against New South Wales. Noting his faded skills and sullied reputation, the Melbourne press lamented, "There is some sentimental notion afloat that as a captain he is peerless."Template:Sfn Pessimism gave way to hope as Wills promised to restore the colony's glory, and in February 1876 he led the Victoria XI onto the Albert Ground. Batting last in the order, he went for 0 and 4 and failed to take a wicket despite bowling the most overs of his side. The media blamed him for Victoria's 195-run loss.Template:Sfn In turn, he blamed his teammates.Template:Sfn

Final years

By 1877, Wills's cricket career "had become a series of petty disputes in petty games" of "ever-deteriorating standards."Template:Sfn No longer an office-bearer with Corio, he moved amongst lower-level clubs in the Geelong area, earning scraps of money wherever he could.Template:Sfn In a brief postscript to one of several rejected applications for employment at the MCC, Wills wrote of old cricketers being "left in the cold". De Moore interpreted it as an "unmistakable backhander for the club". He continues: "To see Wills simply as a beggar would be to misunderstand him."Template:Sfn

File:Heidelberg Cricket Oval, Melbourne.jpg

The oval in rural Heidelberg near which Wills lived and where he played his last cricket.Template:Sfn

After retiring as a footballer, Wills turned to umpiring and committee work, and despite his continued slide into debt, donated money and trophies for football competitions.Template:Sfn He served as Geelong's vice-president from 1873 to 1876, and briefly as club delegate after the 1877 formation of the Victorian Football Association (VFA), but was dropped for unknown reasons.Template:Sfn During the 1878 VFA season, he acted as central umpire, and defended his adjudication of a June match between Carlton and Albert Park in what would be his last public letter.Template:Sfn That year, Wills, broke and hounded by creditors, began selling land in Geelong to help clear his debt, and moved with Barbor to South Melbourne.Template:Sfn He held no positions of power at the South Melbourne Cricket Club and only occasionally appeared in local team lists. He did however convince the club to open its ground to football in winter as a means of improving the turf's durability.Template:Sfn Other clubs soon followed South Melbourne's example as football adapted to an oval-shaped field in the late 1870s.Template:Sfn By this stage, the sport had spread throughout Australasia with Melbourne matches attracting the world's largest football crowds yet seen.Template:Sfn

In late 1878, the MCC rejected Wills's last application for employment, and his dwindling income from cricket was "finally asphyxiated".Template:Sfn From February 1879 onwards, Wills lived with Barbor in Heidelberg, a small village on the margins of Melbourne. Although his life that year went largely unrecorded, he is known to have made only two trips outside of Heidelberg; on one of these, in January 1880, Tom Horan spotted him in the crowd at the MCG during an intercolonial between Victoria and New South Wales.Template:Sfn His alcoholism worsened over this period, as did Barbor's, also a heavy drinker.Template:Sfn He occasionally coached the Heidelberg Cricket Club, its members composed mostly of farmers. On 13 March 1880, he played for the side against the Bohemians—a "travelling circus" of wealthy amateurs—in his last game. Wills took five wickets, his "chucks" working "sweetly" on the rough pitch.Template:Sfn In his last surviving letters, sent two days later to his brothers on Cullin-la-ringo, he wrote that he felt "out of the world" in Heidelberg, and fantasised about escaping to Tasmania. Begging for money to help pay off debts, he promised, "I will not trouble any of you again".Template:Sfn

Suicide

File:Melbourne Hospital 1868.jpg

Wills fled the Melbourne Hospital within hours of his admission.

Isolated and estranged from most of his family, Wills had become, in the words of cricket historian David Frith, "a complete and dangerous and apparently incurable alcoholic".Template:Sfn Oft-repeated stories that Wills ended up in gaol or at Kew Asylum near the end of his life are not supported by substantive evidence.Template:Sfn He and Barbor abruptly stopped drinking on 28 April 1880; it is presumed that they ran out of money to buy more alcohol.Template:Sfn Two days later, Wills started to show signs of alcohol withdrawal, and on 1 May, Barbor, fearing that a calamity was at hand, admitted him to the Melbourne Hospital, where a physician treated him for delirium tremens.Template:Sfn Later that night, Wills absconded, returned home and the next day, in the grip of paranoid delusions, committed suicide by stabbing a pair of scissors into his heart three times.Template:Sfn The inquest, on 3 May, presided over by coroner Richard Youl, found that Wills "killed himself when of unsound mind from excessive drinking".Template:Sfn

His burial took place the next day in an unmarked grave in Heidelberg Cemetery at a private funeral attended by only six people: his brother Egbert, sister Emily and cousin Harrison; Harrison's sister Adela and her son Amos; and cricketer Verney Cameron, who later ran an unsuccessful fundraiser for a tombstone over the grave.Template:Sfn When asked by a journalist about her late son, Elizabeth Wills denied that Tom ever existed, and, according to family lore, she never spoke of him again.Template:Ref label

Personality

Wills struck his contemporaries as peculiar and at times narcissistic, with a prickly temperament, but also kind, charismatic and companionable.Template:Sfnm Often embroiled in controversy, he seemed to lack an understanding of how his words and actions could repeatedly get him into trouble.Template:Sfn His obsession with sport was such that he showed little interest in anything else.<ref name="bio" /> Through his research, journalist Martin Flanagan concluded that Wills was "utterly bereft of insight into himself",Template:Sfn and football historian Gillian Hibbins described him as "an overbearing and undisciplined young man who tended to blame others for his troubles and was more interested in winning a game than in respecting sporting rules."Template:Sfn Wills's family and peers, though angered by his misbehaviour, frequently forgave him.Template:Sfn It seems unlikely that he sought popular favour, but his strong egalitarian streak helped make him a folk hero.Template:Sfn This widespread affection for him, coupled with an understanding of his waywardness, found expression in colonial mottoes and drinking songs, one sung in part: "I have a weakness, I confess — it is for Tommy Wills".Template:Sfnm

While his manner of speech was breezy and laconic,Template:Sfn Wills, as a young adult back in Australia, developed a peculiar stream of consciousness style of writing that sometimes defied syntax and grammar.Template:Sfn His letters are laced with puns, oblique classical and Shakespearean allusions, and droll asides, such as this one about Melbourne in a letter to his brother Cedric: "Everything is dull here, but people are kept alive by people getting shot at in the streets".Template:Sfn The overall impression is one of "a mind full of energy and histrionic ideas without a centre".Template:Sfn Template:Blockquote

In one of his borderline "thought disordered" letters, it is evident that at times he entered a state of depersonalisation: "I do not know what I am standing on ... when anyone speaks to me I cannot for the life of me make out what they are talking about—everything seems so curious."Template:Sfnm In 1884, Hammersley compared Wills's incipient madness and fiery glare to that of Adam Lindsay Gordon,Template:Ref label the Australian bush poet.Template:Sfn Wills's mental instability is a source for speculation: epilepsy has been suggested as a possible cause of his perplexed mental state, and a variant of bipolar illness may account for his disjointed thinking and flowery, confused writings.Template:Sfn

In 1923, the MCC discovered Wills's old cricket cap and put it on display in the Block Arcade, prompting Horace Wills to reflect: "My brother was the nicest man I ever met. Though his nature was care-free, amounting almost to wildness, he had the sweetest temper I have seen in a man, and was essentially a sportsman."Template:Sfn

Playing style and captaincy

File:Richmond Paddock 1860.png

Wills's 1860 "coup de main" has been described as "arguably the most important and influential tactical manoeuvre in the history of Australian football".Template:Sfn

Wills is regarded as Australia's first outstanding cricketer.Template:Sfn "The picture of the athlete" in his prime, "full to overflowing with animal vigor", Wills seemed indestructible.<ref>"Thomas Wentworth Wills". Leader (Melbourne). 8 May 1880. p. 13. Retrieved 15 January 2016.</ref> Match reports refer to him as a Triton, a Colossus, "and many other things besides a cricketer".<ref>Macdonald, Donald. "The M. C. C. The Men and the Ground. A Retrospect". The Argus (Melbourne). 19 December 1908. p. 7. Retrieved 15 January 2016.</ref> Intensely competitive, his win-at-all-costs mentality undermined the amateur ideal of friendly competition, as did his strategic use of intimidation.Template:Sfn A natural leader, his supreme confidence emboldened those around him, and he never despaired the fortunes of his side, even in the face of probable defeat.Template:Sfn On the off-chance that he sought another player's opinion, he invariably followed his own mind,Template:Sfn and his resources at any critical juncture in a match were said to be always clever, and sometimes unique.<ref>"Tom Wills". The Press (Christchurch). 25 May 1880. p. 3.</ref> "As a judge of the game he never had a superior", wrote Britain's The Sportsman. He was "at once a cricket crank and genius", according to The Bulletin.<ref>The Bulletin (7 October 1893), "Sporting Notions". p. 17.</ref> The rarity of Wills's genius drew comparisons to William Shakespeare's.Template:Sfn

Template:Quote box Classified as an all-rounder, Wills saw himself principally as a bowler. With a repertoire spanning "sparklers, rippers, fizzers, trimmers and shooters", he varied his pace and style in order to quickly work out a batsman's weak points.Template:Sfn Noted for his deceptive slow deliveries, dropping mid-flight and big on break, Wills's fast round arm balls sometimes reared head-high from the pitch, terrorising his opponent. His bowling was said to have "the devil" in it at times; English batsman Sir David Serjeant remembered Wills as the only bowler he ever feared.<ref>"Early Interstate Cricket". The Argus (Melbourne). 15 November 1924. p. 9. Retrieved 29 April 2015.</ref> In order to avoid being no-balled for throwing, Wills carefully studied the umpire,<ref>"Game in the Old Days". Winner (Melbourne). 7 March 1917. p. 7.</ref> and developed various tricks, such as worrying aloud that he might be overstepping the crease at the point of delivery. With the umpire's attention diverted to his feet, Wills would "let go a throw for all he was worth".<ref>"The Bowling Trouble". The Australasian (Melbourne). 2 February 1901. p. 20.</ref> His most flagrant throws were likened to that of a baseball pitcher.<ref>"Baseball As She Is Played". The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney). 17 December 1888. p. 3.</ref>

As a batsman, Wills was an unapologetic stonewaller with a "peculiarly ugly" style; his characteristic shots—cuts and to the leg side—ensured the primacy of defence.Template:Sfn He summarised his technique thus: "The ball can't get through the bat."<ref>"Cricket". Otago Witness (Dunedin). 7 January 1887. p. 21.</ref> He could also abruptly turn explosive and, according to one sportswriter, hit as hard as Tom Sayers. On one occasion at the MCG, he made a drive into the Richmond Paddock for eight runs.<ref>"Eighty-six Not Out". Saturday Referee and the Arrow (Sydney). 9 March 1912. p. 1.</ref> An outstanding fieldsman anywhere, Wills excelled in the slips and ran out batsmen with deadly accurate throwing.Template:Sfn

Wills was a "tear-away" footballer whose "pluck and skill", it was said, only George O'Mullane matched.Template:Sfnm The longest drop kick in Victoria, he was an elusive dodger, as at Rugby, and excelled in different positions, moving from a follower and goal-scorer in the ruck to full back.Template:Sfnm Of the early footballers, Wills was appraised as the greatest, most astute captain, and is credited with opening up the Australian game to new tactics and skills and a more free-flowing style of play.Template:Sfnm In July 1860—in what the press called a "coup de main", and what has since been regarded as a "tactical leap" that foreshadowed modern football—Wills breached the era's notional offside line by positioning his Richmond men down the field from defence to attack. By a series of short kick passes, they succeeded in scoring.Template:Sfnm That same month, captaining Melbourne to victory, he pioneered a rudimentary form of flooding; and, in another win for the club, exploited the low player turnout by instructing his men to dart with the ball in open spaces.Template:Sfnm In his season-by-season ranking of players, early football historian C. C. Mullen named Wills "Champion of the Colony" five times.Template:Sfn Historian Bernard Whimpress called Wills an innovator who "would fit easily into today's game".<ref>Whimpress, Bernard (4 August 2015). "Time and Space Review" Template:Webarchive, The Newtown Review of Books. Retrieved 6 March 2016.</ref> Historian Geoffrey Blainey writes: "How many of the tricks and stratagems of the early years came from this clever tactician we will never know."Template:Sfn

Legacy

File:Tom Wills' Grave.jpg

The MCC erected a monument over Wills's unmarked gravesite on the centenary of his death. The epitaph reads: "Founder of Australian football and champion cricketer of his time".<ref name="grave" />

Australia's first celebrity sportsman, Wills began to fade from public consciousness within his own lifetime.<ref name="bio" /> His dark reputation and suicide, and his links to convictism and frontier violence—sources of cultural cringe—have been posited as reasons for his descent into obscurity.Template:Sfn Academic Barry Judd called him "a ghost inhabiting the margins of written history".Template:Sfn Coinciding with a revival of interest in Australia's colonial past, Wills has risen "almost to a vogue", and is seen as a forerunner of today's self-destructive star athletes, some of those qualities that alienated his peers "being less shocking to a generation that likes its heroes flawed".Template:Sfn The subject of scholarly, literary and artistic works, his story has been likened to Ned Kelly's as a powerful and quintessentially Australian narrative,Template:Sfn and in 2006, The Bulletin named him as one of the 100 most influential Australians.<ref>"The 100 most influential Australians" (27 June 2006), The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 21 February 2019.</ref> After several attempts by different authors since the 1930s, a comprehensive biography was published in 2008, Greg de Moore's Tom Wills: First Wild Man of Australian Sport.<ref>Watt, Jarrod (28 July 2008). "Investigating the death of the father of football", ABC South West Victoria. Retrieved 12 January 2015.</ref>

Wills's unmarked gravesite was restored in 1980 with a headstone erected by the MCC using public funds.<ref name="grave">Thomas Wentworth Wills, Monument Australia. Retrieved 13 May 2013.</ref> He was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1989<ref>Thomas Wills, Sport Australia Hall of Fame. Retrieved 26 September 2020.</ref> and became an inaugural member of the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 1996. The Tom Wills Room in the MCG's Shane Warne Stand serves as a venue for corporate functions.<ref>Tom Wills Room, Melbourne Cricket Ground. Retrieved 4 September 2013.</ref> A statue outside the MCG, sculpted by Louis Laumen and erected in 2001, depicts Wills umpiring the famous 1858 football match between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College.<ref name="statue">First Australian Rules Game, Monument Australia. Retrieved 7 June 2013.</ref> The AFL commemorated the 150th anniversary of the match by staging the Tom Wills Round during the 2008 AFL Season. The two schools played in a curtain raiser at the MCG ahead of the round opener between Melbourne and Geelong.<ref>Harris, Amelia (7 August 2008). "Original and still the best", Herald Sun. Retrieved 15 August 2013.</ref> That same year, Victoria's busiest freeway interchange, the Monash–EastLink interchange in Dandenong North, was named the Tom Wills Interchange.<ref>Ballantyne, Adrian (3 March 2008). "Legend rules the road" Template:Webarchive, Dandenong Leader. Retrieved 15 August 2013.</ref> Tom Wills Oval, inaugurated in 2013 at Sydney Olympic Park, serves as the training base for the AFL's Greater Western Sydney Giants.<ref>Tom Wills Oval Template:Webarchive, Sydney Olympic Park Authority. Retrieved 22 May 2013.</ref>

Marngrook theory

File:Marn grook football.jpg

Detail of an 1857 etching that shows Aboriginal boys kicking and catching a ball made from plant roots.Template:Sfn

Since the 1980s, it has been suggested that Wills played or observed an Aboriginal football game, Marngrook,Template:Ref label as a child growing up in the Grampians among the Djab wurrung, and incorporated some of its features into early Australian football.Template:Sfn The theory has provoked an intense debate dubbed "football's history wars".Template:Sfn In her 2008 essay "A Seductive Myth", Hibbins calls the proposed link an "emotional belief" lacking "any intellectual credibility".Template:Sfn She points out that neither Wills nor any other football founders mention Aboriginal games in existing documents, and states that there is no evidence of Marngrook being played in the Grampians.Template:Sfn Since then, among the personal papers of ethnographer Alfred William Howitt, an interview has been found with a Mukjarrawaint man who recalls playing Marngrook in the Grampians.Template:Sfn Also, in his first-hand account of Aboriginal games, James Dawson, an Aboriginal rights activist, records the Djab wurrung word for football as "Min'gorm".Template:Sfn De Moore therefore argues that Marngrook was likely played in the vicinity where Wills grew up, "or, at the very least, that the local Aboriginal people knew of such a game". That Wills knew of Marngrook, he adds, is speculative at best.Template:Sfn

Proponents of a link point to the games' similarities, such as drop punting the ball and leaping, catching feats.Template:Sfn Academics Jenny Hocking and Nell Reidy write that Wills, in adapting football to Melbourne's parklands, wanted a game that kept the players off the ground and the ball in the air. "It is here", they argue, "in the interstices between rugby and Australian football, that the influence of [Marngrook] can be seen most clearly".Template:Sfn Historian John Hirst countered that early Australian football was aligned with rugby-style roots, and bore little resemblance to Marngrook.Template:Sfn According to de Moore, Wills was "almost solely influenced" by Rugby School football, with local conditions also having an effect.Template:Sfn

Flanagan promoted the Marngrook theory in his novel The Call (1996), an historical imagining into Wills's life,Template:Sfn and argued in an essay addressed to Wills that he must have known Aboriginal games as it was in his nature to play: "There's two things about you everybody seems to have agreed on—you'd drink with anyone and you'd play with anyone."Template:Sfn He quotes Lawton Wills Cooke, a descendant of Horace Wills (Tom's brother), who said a family story had been passed down about Tom playing Marngrook as a boy.<ref>Flanagan, Martin (27 December 2008). "A new chapter in the legend of Tom Wills", The Age. Retrieved 21 October 2012.</ref> Family historian T. S. Wills Cooke disputed that such a story existed, calling the Marngrook link "a bridge too far" and an example of historical revisionism motivated by political correctness.Template:Sfn Despite lacking in hard evidence, the theory is often presented as factual.Template:Sfn In Moyston, the self-proclaimed birthplace of Australian football,Template:Sfn stands an AFL-endorsed monument, unveiled by historian Col Hutchinson, commemorating Wills's childhood in the area playing Marngrook.<ref>Thomas Wentworth Wills, Monument Australia. Retrieved 4 October 2016.</ref>

The "father of football"

File:Tom wills statue.jpg

Statue outside the MCG of Wills umpiring the 1858 game between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College. The plaque reads that Wills "did more than any other person—as a footballer and umpire, co-writer of the rules and promoter of the game—to develop Australian football during its first decade."<ref name="statue" />

The role that Wills and others played in pioneering Australian football went largely unrecognised in their lifetimes, as the sport had yet to develop a historical perspective.Template:Sfn By the late 1870s, Wills's 1858 letter calling for the organisation and codification of football was singled out as a seminal document.<ref>"The Origin of the Melbourne Club". The Australasian (Melbourne). 26 February 1876. p. 13. Retrieved 2 August 2015.</ref> He wrote at this time that he attempted to promote football in Victoria as early as 1857, "but it was not taken to kindly until the following year".Template:Sfn By 1908, the year of Australian football's jubilee celebrations, H. C. A. Harrison had become known as the "father of football" on account of his substantial reputation on and off the field.Template:Sfn Wills was the next most often recalled pioneer during this period,Template:Sfn and Harrison credited him with initiating the sport when he "recommended that we Australians should work out a game of our own."<ref>Harrison, H. C. A. (12 August 1914). "Australian Game: Its Birth in the Commonwealth". Winner (Melbourne). p. 8. Retrieved 3 May 2016.</ref> More recent historiography has shown that while Harrison played a pivotal role over a long period, he did not co-write the first rules in 1859, nor did he play in the 1858 games. With this correction, a number of historians elevated Wills to a position of pre-eminence,Template:Sfn variously calling him the game's founder, father or inventor.Template:Sfnm Blainey said of Wills: "It is far too much to say that he founded the game, but it would be too little to say that he was simply one among many founders."Template:Sfn

It is often said that, due to his suicide, Wills was written out of the game's history, or at the very least downplayed as an important figure. De Moore rejects this view, noting that the contributions of Hammersley, Smith, Thompson and other pioneers, rather than those of Wills, were generally overlooked.Template:Sfn In her analysis of early football, Hibbins concludes that Thompson's journalistic ability as a promoter of the game "probably" makes him the most significant pioneer, and that the importance of Wills's role has been overemphasised.Template:Sfn Echoing Hibbins's arguments, Roy Hay writes that Wills, while a "catalyst" for football, was "much more interested in playing and performing than in organising".Template:Sfn British historian Tony Collins even compared Wills to William Webb Ellis and Abner Doubleday, the apocryphal inventors of rugby and baseball, respectively.Template:Sfn In response to Collins's suggestion that Wills "quickly faded from the footballing scene", journalist James Coventry highlighted his seventeen-year playing career (by far the longest of the pioneers), the influence he wielded as captain-coach of various clubs for much of that time, and his administrative work. He concludes that Collins and other scholars have "perversely" devalued Wills's real contributions "in their rush to discredit [the Marngrook theory]".Template:Sfn

See also

• Cultural depictions of Tom Wills
• List of Australian rules footballers and cricketers
• List of cricketers called for throwing in top-class cricket matches in Australia
• List of Victoria first-class cricketers
• Tom Wills Medal

Footnotes

a. Template:Note label Wills's birthplace is a matter of some conjecture as there is a lack of reliable archival information on the subject, and the precise whereabouts of his parents are difficult to pinpoint during the period around 1835.Template:Sfn Molonglo is given as his birthplace in an 1869 biographical piece in which the author states that Wills had given him notes on his life.Template:Sfn A common alternative is Parramatta in modern-day Sydney.Template:Sfn When Victorians claimed Wills as one of theirs, he liked to boast that he was a "Sydney man"—a reference to the colony of his birth.Template:Sfn

b. Template:Note label Tom had eight siblings: Emily Spencer Wills (1842–1925), Cedric Spencer Wills (1844–1914), Horace Spencer Wills (1847–1928), Egbert Spencer Wills (1849–1931), Elizabeth Spencer Wills (1852–1930), Eugenie Spencer Wills (1854–1937), Minna Spencer Wills (1856–1943) and Hortense Sarah Spencer Wills (1861–1907).Template:Sfn

c. Template:Note label Wills and H. C. A. Harrison shared Sarah Howe as a grandmother.Template:Sfn Harrison was born ten months after Wills in New South Wales and as a young boy overlanded to the Port Phillip District, where he often visited the Wills family at Lexington.Template:Sfn They became brothers-in-law in 1864 when Harrison married Emily Wills.Template:Sfn

d. Template:Note label The Aboriginal men went by sobriquets given to them by their European employers in the Western District.Template:Sfn In Mullagh's case, he was named after the station where he worked.Template:Sfn

e. Template:Note label This story was related in the following piece of Wills family oral history: "Elizabeth Wills refused to attend [the funeral] nor would she acknowledge Tom after his death as she was very religious and considered [suicide] a great sin. ... A reporter asked Elizabeth about her son. 'Which son?' she asked. 'Thomas' said the reporter. 'I have no son called Thomas' was the old lady's reply".Template:Sfn

f. Template:Note label Gordon suffered a demise similar to that of Wills, committing suicide in 1870.Template:Sfn He describes Wills as a fearsome bowler in his 1865 long poem "Ye Wearie Wayfarer".Template:Sfn

g. Template:Note label Each Indigenous language group played its own variant of football and with its own name.Template:Sfn "Marngrook", from the Gunditjmara language, is used as a generic term for Aboriginal football.Template:Sfn Template:Refend

Bibliography

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External links

• Biographer Greg De Moore discusses Tom Wills on "Conversations" with Richard Fidler, ABC Local Radio
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