In the last third of the 19th century, spectator sport in Melbourne had an appeal unmatched in perhaps any city of that era. The climate favoured outdoor sport. So did the abundance of cheap land for sports fields, the high proportion of young men in the population, the increasing prosperity, and especially the leisure. The swelling city provided the spectators in large numbers. By the 1880s the day of the Melbourne Cup was a public holiday, and between 80 000 and 100 000 people travelled to the racecourse or the hill overlooking the racing. At the cricket a total of 100 000 people was said to have watched the test match against England in 1895. Outside Melbourne every village seemed to have its racecourse, and some bush racecourses – such as Lal Lal near Ballarat – were given a railway in the spendthrift years so that more people could go to picnic meetings. Sport became a cult and the Irish-born jockey Tommy Corrigan, was one hero. In 1894 he was killed in the Grand National Steeplechase at Caulfield; and Swanston Street was hushed as his funeral procession, two miles long, passed slowly by.

Australian football was the most remarkable of these spectator sports. It is sometimes said to have stemmed from Gaelic football in Ireland, but we now know that the Irish game is a later game. Australian football was certainly influenced by the game played at the Rugby School in England; and the Victorian squatter's son Tom Wills, a Rugby boy, did much to shape the new game. All in all, however, the new game was essentially a series of Victorian inventions. It was not born ready made but changed itself so much, decade after decade, that the present game is unrecognisable from that which was first played on Melbourne parklands in 1858. The rules just grew, spreading more like a climbing vine than a tree. At first the teams embraced as many as thirty players, and they ran in packs. A goal could be rushed through in a scrimmage or be drop kicked, and the ‘behinds’ or near misses did not count for a point until 1897. At first there was no umpire, and the rival captains – obviously men of grave wisdom – interpreted the rules. The game was therefore full of shouting and appealing.