Dave’s Football Blog

Regular reader Sean Fishlock pointed me to an interesting footy find — a sketch of Australia’s indigenous people, found at Museum Victoria, that features kids playing Marn Grook in the background. As you might recall, Marn Grook is the aboriginal kicking game that became the inspiration for Australian football’s high marking rule.

Dr. Michael Green, the head of Indigenous cultures at the museum, says he came across the picture by accident.

“I was looking at the image with my colleagues for different reasons entirely, and it suddenly struck me that those kids are playing footy,” he said. “It looks like the games of kick-to-kick we used to play in the school yard.”

Click on the snippet of the image here to see the entire sketch, which was part of an 1850s expedition by Victorian scientist William Blandowski. Notes included with the sketch say that the point of the game was to “never let the ball touch the ground.” It is reportedly the oldest image of footy yet discovered in Australia.

Granted, it’s probably still not quite as old as some Cuju artwork out there, but still, anything that lasts 150 years must be pretty good.

(Thanks, Sean!)

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