Play to re-create the beginnings of local footy

Andrew Mathieson
PUBS are always a natural meeting places for footy clubs, but for Geelong, theirs was history-changing.
In 1860, Geelong’s players started out kicking a pigskin around a back paddock of the Argyle Hotel in Geelong West before retiring for a few drinks to first ponder about the new team’s colours, its office bearers, then the rules.
There the club’s early adminstrators spoke about eliminating hacking, or tripping as the illegal practice is now known, from Australian Rules – or lack thereof. Those rules were initially conjured up on the rough Victorian goldfields theatrical.
More than 150 years later, a play at the same pub depicting those initial meetings will have footy’s history buffs drooling this Saturday.
Doug Mann, director of The Game We Call Our Own, said the play will be “saturated in authentic history”, from the players and administrators of the time to letters documenting the club’s early beginnings.
“It’s a real grab-bag of history – it’s been thoroughly researched,” he said
“I’ve even consulted books that haven’t been published yet and are still at the printers.”
The National Trust was keen to perform the historical re-enactment to coincide with World Heritage Day.
Bit actors and former publicans of the Argyle Hotel were invited to take on roles in the play.
The pub on the site has been under the name Irish Murphy’s since 1996, although inner-city housing has since swallowed up Argyle Square, the club’s home ground for the first two decades.
Mr Mann said evidence suggests the new game and the football club helped build Geelong into a thriving community.
“The incredible interest it created was in such a amazingly short space of time,” he said.
“Football captured the imagination of the populace and it all got wrapped up with nationhood, the new colony and a game we can call our own.”
The play to be filmed for prosperity will take place at Irish Murphy’s on Saturday from 11am for up to three performances.