Pioneering figure of our games

IT is 150 years this month since the first Australian cricket team toured England — a side comprised of 13 Aboriginal players, mostly recruited from Victoria’s Western District.

The team was created by Tom Wills, one of the fathers of Australian rules football who helped establish the first footy club, the Melbourne Football Club, in 1858.

Wills played most of his football for Geelong, captaining the team on many occasions. He retired from football in 1876.

Wills had been the captain and coach of the touring Aboriginal team, but was removed from the position before the tour of England.

The Aboriginal team played 47 matches in England between May and October, 1868, winning 14, losing 14 and drawing 19.

The Aboriginal tour was said to have paved the way for the Australian representative cricket team to tour England 10 years later in 1878.

Wills was educated in Melbourne and at the Rugby School in England, where he became an outstanding cricketer and played a form of rugby.

On his return to Victoria, he played in 12 intercolonial cricket matches against New South Wales between 1857 and 1876.

Wills had the idea that cricketers should keep fit during winter, which led him and his brother-in-law Colden Harrison to establish a new winter game that was a combination of rugby, soccer and Gaelic football.

Wills was said to have played at least 170 football matches for Geelong, 31 for Melbourne, and an unknown number with Richmond.

But after retiring from active sport Wills took to drinking and took his own life in 1880, aged just 45.

To mark the anniversary of that first cricket tour, Australia Post has released a series of stamps and display sets outlining the story of the first cricket tour.

The stamp design includes one of the few photographs of the 1868 tour taken at Swansea, where the team took on the Gentlemen of Swansea and won by an innings and 33 runs. Contact: peterjohnbegg@gmail.com