Cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...

er and Australian rules football pioneer

Tom Wills Thomas Wentworth Wills (19 August 1835 – 2 May 1880) was an Australian sportsman who is credited with being Australia's first cricketer of significance and a founder of Australian rules football. Born in the British penal colony of New ...

is the subject of a growing body of works in art and popular culture.

Visual arts

Painted by William Handcock in 1870, a full-length portrait of Wills in his cricket flannels is held at the National Sports Museum. Another painting of Wills wearing a football guernsey is in possession of the Geelong Football Club and held at

Kardinia Park Kardinia Park is a major public park located in South Geelong, Victoria. A number of public and sporting facilities are located in the park: a major AFL stadium, a secondary football oval, a cricket field, an open air swimming pool, a numb ...

. A monument to Wills was erected at Moyston in 1998. In 1988, the

Melbourne Cricket Club The Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC) is a sports club based in Melbourne, Australia. It was founded in 1838 and is one of the oldest sports clubs in Australia. The MCC is responsible for management and development of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, ...

erected bronze doors, designed by

Robert Ingpen Robert Roger Ingpen Order of Australia, AM, Royal Society of Arts, FRSA (born 13 October 1936) is an Australians, Australian graphic designer, illustrator, and writer. For his "lasting contribution" as a children's illustrator he received the b ...

, outside the club's entrance, depicting Wills holding a football. A statue of Wills umpiring an 1858 football match was erected outside the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 2002. Wills is the subject of a series of paintings by

Archibald Prize The Archibald Prize is an Australian portraiture art prize for painting, generally seen as the most prestigious portrait prize in Australia. It was first awarded in 1921 after the receipt of a bequest from J. F. Archibald, the editor ...

nominee Martin Tighe.

Literature

Martin Flanagan's 1998 historical novel '' The Call'' is a semi-fictional account of Wills' life. In it, Wills is cast as a tragic sporting genius, and the dingo is used to symbolise his identity as an "ambiguous creature" caught between indigenous and non-indigenous Australia. In ''The Paddock That Grew'', released that same year,

Keith Dunstan John Keith Dunstan (3 February 1925 – 11 September 2013), known as Keith Dunstan, was an Australian journalist and author. He was a prolific writer and the author of more than 25 books. Early life Dunstan was born in Malvern East, Victoria, ...

imagines Wills as a ghost touring modern

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

Music

Wills has inspired numerous songs including "Tom Wills" (2002) by

Mick Thomas Michael James Thomas (born 7 February 1960) is an Australian singer-songwriter, producer, guitarist and hotelier. Thomas was the founding mainstay of a folk rock group, Weddings Parties Anything (1984–1998), and leader of Mick Thomas and t ...

Weddings Parties Anything Weddings, Parties, Anything. was an Australian folk rock band formed in 1984 in Melbourne and continuing until 1999. Their name came from The Clash song "Revolution Rock". Musicologist Billy Pinnell described their first album as the best Austr ...

fame; "Tom Wills Would" (2004) by the

Warumpi Band Warumpi Band () were an Australian country and Aboriginal rock group which formed in the outback settlement of Papunya, Northern Territory, in 1980. The original line-up was George Burarrwanga on vocals and didgeridoo, Gordon Butcher Tjapanang ...

's Neil Murray; "The Ten Rules" (2010) by

folk rock Folk rock is a hybrid music genre that combines the elements of folk and rock music, which arose in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom in the mid-1960s. In the U.S., folk rock emerged from the folk music revival. Performers s ...

band The Holy Sea; and "Tom Wills" by

Goanna A goanna is any one of several species of lizards of the genus '' Varanus'' found in Australia and Southeast Asia. Around 70 species of ''Varanus'' are known, 25 of which are found in Australia. This varied group of carnivorous reptiles ranges ...

frontman

Shane Howard Shane Michael Howard (born 26 January 1955) is an Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist, he was the mainstay of folk rock group Goanna (1977–85, 1998) which had hit singles with " Solid Rock" (September 1982, No. 3) and " Let the ...

, written and performed exclusively for ''

The Marngrook Footy Show ''The Marngrook Footy Show'' was a sport panel show broadcast in Australia focusing on Australian rules football and aimed at Indigenous viewers. Debuting on television in 2007 after 10 years on radio, the show first aired on NITV and on Channe ...

''.

Film and television

Plans for a

feature film A feature film or feature-length film is a narrative film (motion picture or "movie") with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole presentation in a commercial entertainment program. The term ''feature film'' originall ...

about Wills were made in 1989 but later abandoned. A docudrama on Wills' life, shot in 2008, had its premier at the

Arts Centre Melbourne Arts Centre Melbourne, originally known as the Victorian Arts Centre and briefly called the Arts Centre, is a performing arts centre consisting of a complex of theatres and concert halls in the Melbourne Arts Precinct, located in the central ...

in 2014, and was subsequently shown on Australian television. Portions of the docudrama also form part of an exhibit on Wills' life at the

International Cricket Hall of Fame The Bradman Museum & International Cricket Hall of Fame is a permanent cultural exhibition dedicated to the game of cricket. It is located in the Australian town of Bowral, New South Wales. The exhibition opened in November 2010 in buildings forme ...

. Wills is portrayed by Nathan Phillips.Morreti, Daniel (1 December 2010)
"Short Film Big On Action"
, ''Film Ink''. Retrieved 22 September 2015. Wills and the

origins of Australian rules football The origins of Australian rules football date back to the late 1850s in Melbourne, the capital city of Victoria. There is documentary evidence of "foot-ball" being played in Australia as early as the 1820s. These games were poorly documented bu ...

are the subject of an episode of ''Australia: The Story of Us'' (2015), produced by

Yahoo!7 Yahoo! Australia (formerly Yahoo7 between 2006 and 2018) is the Australian subsidiary of global internet company Yahoo! Originally a 50/50 joint venture between Yahoo! and Seven West Media, it has been a 100% subsidiary of Verizon Media since ...

Theatre

In 2004,

Bruce Myles Bruce Myles (born 29 November 1940) is an Australian actor and film director. He has appeared in 40 films and television shows since 1963. In 1987, along with Michael Pattinson, he co-directed the film ''Ground Zero''. It was entered into the 3 ...

adapted Flanagan's novel ''The Call'' into a play of the same name for the

Malthouse Theatre Malthouse Theatre is the resident theatre company of The Malthouse building in Southbank, part of the Melbourne Arts Precinct. In the 1980s it was known as the Playbox Theatre Company and was housed in the Playbox Theatre in Melbourne's CBD. A ...

References

External links

* * {{commons-inline, Tom Wills Wills, Tom Wills, Tom