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Old Rivals: Geelong v Carlton

Part 1: Our Game

A hybrid of Association football, Rugby football and Gaelic football, Australian Rules football was first thought up by cricketer Tom Wills in 1858 as a winter sport to keep other cricketers in shape. The same year, he oversaw the historic first match between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar School. Without any rules, the match was a ruthless, 40 a man side struggle between the two teams, and in 1859, to formally create rules for this new game, Tom Wills, alongside W. J. Hammersley, J. B. Thompson and Thomas Smith met on 14 May 1859 and formed the Melbourne Football Club, and codified the game as Melbourne Rules.

During the following 2 decades, the sport grew and evolved, adopting different rules as new teams were formed. In 1877, representatives from 10 Melbourne based clubs met and formed the VFA, the Victorian Football Association, and finally adopted a set rules which the league could follow.

However, by the late 1880's, the rules of the game were being frequently challenged by the more professional clubs, such as Geelong and Carlton. This led to the strongest teams leading a reform movement in the league, which by 1889 had amounted to nothing but the destruction of 6 clubs. This rift over the professionalism and rules of the game carried through into the 1890's and the formation of the Collingwood Football club in 1893, which in 1894 had re-began talks with the other major clubs in splitting from the VFA to form their own league.

Talks came ahead following the 1896 VFA season, in which representatives of the 6 most strongest clubs met on October 2 following the seasons end.

In our timeline, these talks amounted to the formation of the stronger league, the VFL (Victorian Football League), which would become the future AFL. However, this timeline will search the repercussions of a weaker VFL, and it's eventual collapse back into the VFA.
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