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Concept
Universal football
Summary
Universal football was the name given to a proposed hybrid sport of Australian rules football and rugby league, proposed at different times between 1908 and 1933 as a potential national football code to be played throughout Australia and New Zealand. The game was trialled, but it was never otherwise played in any regular competition.
By the early 20th century, Australian rules football, which had originated in Victoria in 1858, had been established as the dominant football code in Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia, holding that position since the 1870s or 1880s. Rugby football, which originated in the English Rugby School, had been the dominant code in New South Wales throughout the same time. In Queensland, Australian rules was originally dominant, up until the 1880s, after which rugby became the leading code.
One of the earliest mentions of a hybrid code was in 1874 when Brisbane's Victorian Association (Australian Rules) clubs and the two Brisbane rugby clubs Rangers and Bonnet Rouge experimented with mixed rules to compete against each other, however it was ultimately deemed a failure, with clubs instead opting to co-operate until the growing rift caused the Northern Rugby Union to break away from the Queensland Football Association (1880-1890) and ultimately become more popular.
In 1884 H C A Harrison known then as the "father of Australian Football" visited London where he proposed unifying Australian rules with Rugby under a set of hybrid rules and suggested that rugby clubs adopt some of the Victorian Rules. Football officials were insulted at the suggestion that they "abandon their rules to oblige an Antipodean game".
The preeminence of the traditional rugby union code was usurped by the newer and professional rugby league code with its introduction from northern England to Australia in 1907.
The idea of combining the two sports to create a "universal football" code to be played throughout Australia, and potentially around the world, arose at around the same time as rugby league began in Australia.
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