Tom Wills

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This article is about the Australian sportsman. For other people with the same name, see Thomas
Wills (disambiguation).

Tom Wills

Wills, c. 1857

Born Thomas Wentworth Wills

19 August 1835

Molonglo Plain, New South Wales, Australia

Died 2 May 1880 (aged 44)

Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia

Cause of death Stab wound (suicide)

Resting place Warringal Cemetery, Victoria, Australia

Partner(s) Sarah Barbor

 Parent(s) Horatio Wills

Elizabeth McGuire

Relatives Thomas Antill (cousin)

H. C. A. Harrison (cousin)

Thomas Wentworth Wills (19 August 1835 2 May 1880) was a sportsman who is credited with
being Australia's first cricketer of significance and a founder of Australian rules football. Born in the
British colony of New South Wales to a wealthy family descended from convicts, Wills grew up in the
bush on properties owned by his father, the pastoralist and politician Horatio Wills, in what is now the
Australian state of Victoria. He befriended local Aborigines, learning their language and customs. At
the age of 14, Wills was sent to England to attend Rugby School, where he became captain of its
cricket team, and played an early version of rugby football. After Rugby, Wills represented
the Cambridge University Cricket Club in the annual match against Oxford, and played at first-
class level for Kent and the Marylebone Cricket Club. An athletic all-rounder with
exceptional bowling skills, he was regarded as one of the finest young cricketers in England.
Returning to Victoria in 1856, Wills achieved Australia-wide stardom as a cricketer, captaining
the Victorian team to repeated victories in intercolonial matches. He played for, and was secretary of
the Melbourne Cricket Club, but his larrikin streak and defections to other clubs strained their
relationship. In 1858 he called for the formation of a "foot-ball club" with a "code of laws" to keep
cricketers fit during winter. After founding the Melbourne Football Club in 1859, Wills co-wrote the
first laws of Australian rules football. He and his cousin H. C. A. Harrison spearheaded the sport's
development as captains, umpires and administrators.
In 1861, at the height of his fame, Wills joined his father on an eight-month trek into
the Queensland outback to establish a family property. Two weeks after their arrival, Wills' father and
18 others were murdered in the largest massacre of settlers by Aborigines in Australian history. Wills
survived and resumed playing sport upon his return to Victoria in 1864, and in 186667, led
an Aboriginal cricket team on an Australian tour as its captain-coach. In a career marked by
controversy, Wills challenged cricket's amateur-professionaldivide, and was frequently accused
of bending rules to the point of cheating. An admitted "chucker", Wills was no-balled out of top-class
cricket in 1872. He failed in an 1876 comeback attempt, by which time his glory years belonged to a
colonial past that seemed "like a distant land".[1] The rest of his life was characterised by social
isolation, flights from creditors, and heavy drinking, likely as a means to self-medicate what is now
termed posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In 1880, suffering from delirium tremens, he
committed suicide by stabbing himself in the heart.
Wills fell into obscurity after his death, but has undergone a revival in Australian culture since the
1990s. He was an inaugural inductee into the Australian Football Hall of Fame, and has inspired
works across the arts. Today he is described as the archetypal tragic sports hero, and as a symbol
of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Controversy surrounds a
theory that Wills incorporated features of an Aboriginal game into early Australian football. According
to biographer Greg de Moore, Wills "stands alone in all his absurdity, his cracked egalitarian heroism
and his fatal self-destructivenessthe finest cricketer and footballer of the age".[2]