Waiting for Association football: incipient soccer in Australia, 1850–1880

Abstract

Australian soccer has a history much deeper and broader than is allowed in the conventional received story. Even some soccer historians are tempted to claim that the game was introduced here in the 1880s despite the fact that versions of the non-handling and kicking game (either as embodied practice or press advocacies) have been present since the 1850s. Reading newspaper reports against the mainstream narrative grain allows us to see a bustling community of players and advocates of Association football well before the oft-assumed starting point of 1880.