dribbling

It's a curse for the football historian that the reports on games in the 19th century rarely give us much direct information about the technical nature of the games being played. We know they were football matches in which the object of the game was to score goals by kicking (and sometimes carrying) the ball through goalposts.

Some historians look back at these games and see them as early manifestations of their own favoured codes of football. The tendency is to see descriptions of passages of play or technical terms and simply transplant aspects of contemporary football codes back in history. Reading about a mark taken in a game in 1875, an AFL historian might imagine a glorious speccy at the MCG while a rugby historian might envisage a brave fullback firmly planting his feet and risking a pummelling at the shoulders of charging enemy forwards. Both images are potentially correct; both are also likely misleading.

So it is with the practice of dribbling. 

Q: Which code is the dribbling code?

Today, soccer would be a fairly universal answer. But looking to the past things can be very different. Dribbling it seems was common across the football games of Australia in the 1870s. I need to hold my hand up here and admit that I have seen references to dribbling from this period and have imagined Leo Messi with a handlebar moustache and stupidly large knickerbockers weaving his magic across the Hobart Domain. But I have been guilty of that most severe of historian crimes: ahistoricism. Not being historical in my analysis.

Two passages from the Hobart newspapers in 1879 demonstrate this difficulty:

Context

Hobart Tribune 12 May 1879

The choice of the Home rules by the Cricketers is scarcely a wise one, as the game is rendered not only less interesting to sightseers, but is apparently more dangerous. There are not those opportunites afforded for briliancy of play by "marking" and "dribbling" which are not permitted, and unless they conform to the regulations adopted by the other clubs they might as well retire from the practice of the game as it will be a matter of impossibility for them to play any important matches.

Hobart Mercury 26 May 1879

The "drop kick," hardly known in the Association game, was brought to bear with crushing effect by their skilful opponents, while "dribbling," the most telling feature of the Association game (adopted by the cricketers) was almost out of the question in the absence of any rules as to "off side".

Dribbling in Melbourne football

As late as 1879 The Footballer (published in Carlton as a compendium/almanac of Melbourne football) emphasised ground kicking, and warned players against playing the ball with the hand when a kick was an option. Most remarkable however is the advocacy of the practice of ‘Rushing alias Sniggling’ in which a player was instructed to:

Run gently forward, patting the ball before you with either foot, as occasions serve, taking care never to let the ball get above a few yards in front of you. Gradually increase your speed till you can keep the ball well under control without impairing your rate of progression. This is very difficult of attainment, but it is of invaluable service in actual play. In this way a good player will take the ball through a whole host of his enemies, outspeeding this one, eluding that, until he gets a favorable chance at goal. (13) (to my mind, this is dribbling)

These instructions are not applicable to the game of Australian Rules today (nor the Victorian rules in 1879 as present day historians like to envisage them). The instructions are more appropriate to the practice of dribbling in a round-ball, soccer-like game (or in a rugby mode focused on the dribbling method). 

This, and the text’s lack of focus on the mark, suggest that this material has been lifted from an instruction manual for Association football. (the truth is that the piece was first published in Beaton’s Annual 1866) 

One alternative, however, is that this material was actually useful for the crack footballers of Carlton, Essendon, Geelong, Hotham and company. 

What does that do to the story of football in Melbourne as we know it?

Ballarat Star 16 September 1878

The ball "was dribbled through. If the Ballarat goal-keeper had kept in his place he could, have easily stopped it."