CHRONOLOGY
Unravelling the origins of Australian football is a difficult, indeed some would say well nigh impossible, task. For convenience this chronology adopts the time-honoured but in truth somewhat questionable convention of earmarking 1858 at the year of the code's inception. It was then that one of the earliest sets of laws was framed, and it was also then that code's the longest surviving club was formed. However, it should not be inferred from this that football of a sort resembling prototypical Australian Rules was not being played in Melbourne at an earlier date. It is merely that the task of authoritatively describing that football is prohibitive, for the simple reason that reliable documentary evidence is extremely hard to come by.
The perspective of this chronology mirrors that of most of the rest of this site in that it is unabashedly universalist: Australian football is treated throughout as, first and foremost, a quintessentially Australian game, with regional variations and idiosyncrasies only adding to its appeal and uniqueness. It is never, ever - either in this chronology or elsewhere in the site - regarded as a primarily Victorian phenomenon. To do so would be seriously to diminish and distort the game.
The chronology is split into sections, each covering a number of seasons. Links to these sections are listed sequentially below: