As the British and Irish Lions prepare to take on the Wallabies in the third and final Test tonight, Daily Mail Australia remembers the time the Lions came down under and tried to beat the Aussies at their own game.
On June 16, 1888, more than 22,000 people packed the Melbourne Cricket Ground to watch Carlton take on a touring British rugby team under Victorian Rules.
This was no ordinary football match.
The visitors were a hand-picked squad of English, Irish and Scottish rugby players, later recognised as the first British and Irish Lions, attempting to master a code they had never played competitively.
Their sixth game of the tour was their first under Victorian Rules and it immediately captured the public imagination.
The tour itself was a bold commercial gamble.
The 1888 British and Irish Lions on board to Australia for a long tour that would include rugby and Aussie Rules matches
Carlton, drawn playing against Melbourne in the 1888 VFA season, were the 1887 champions
Cricketing entrepreneurs Arthur Shrewsbury, Alfred Shaw and James Lillywhite organised a 54-match schedule across Australia and NZ, mixing rugby union fixtures with matches under Australian football rules.
The aim was to keep the tourists playing and earning gate takings across a long stay in the colonies.
In Victoria, Australian Rules dominated the sporting scene and the organisers knew local clubs could deliver large crowds.
Matches between the British tourists and the strongest Victorian Football Association teams promised both novelty and revenue.
The English players were not without preparation. In New Zealand, they had been given instruction in the basics of Victorian Rules by local players PG McShane and J Lawler, but the differences between the codes were stark.
Victorian football was faster, more open and far more reliant on accurate kicking, positional marking and quick handball.
Rugby players were used to rucks, mauls and forward drives, not the constant movement and aerial contests of the Australian game.
Carlton, reigning VFA premiers, wasted no time in showing the gap.
Carlton were the reigning VFA champions and quickly taught the Lions a lesson, but the touring party quickly adapted to the Australian game
The British and Irish Lions team left a space for their captain in their photos, after he died on the tour
The locals outpaced and out-thought the visitors, who played with spirit but little tactical cohesion.
The Age remarked that the British ‘worked harder but achieved less,’ while the Bendigo Advertiser was blunt in its view that the tourists did not understand the game.
Carlton won comfortably by 14 goals to 3, but the grit of the Englishmen and the spectacle of the contest kept the crowd engaged.
Four days later, the tourists travelled to Bendigo and shocked the locals with a 5 to 1 victory.
They followed this with a 3-3 draw in Castlemaine, showing signs that they were quickly adapting to the game.
In South Australia they initially struggled against the strong Adelaide clubs, but the breakthrough came when they edged out Port Adelaide 8-7.
The South Australian Register praised the performance as ‘as brilliant as anything Adelaideans have ever seen at the finish of a game,’ noting their improvement in ball handling, positional play and goal-kicking accuracy.
The return to Victoria brought more success. Wins over Horsham, Sandhurst, Ballarat and Kyneton showed that the British had learned enough to be competitive.
The 1888 Lions shortly after a game of Victorian Rules during a tour where they won six matches of the sport despite never having played it before
Their final Australian football record stood at six wins, one draw and twelve losses.
While they were never truly a match for the top VFA sides, they proved far more adaptable than many had predicted.
The tour demonstrated the skill gap between the codes but also the potential for cross-code contests to entertain and draw big crowds.
The tour had little direct influence on Australian football’s spread to Britain, but it was significant for rugby.
It demonstrated the commercial potential of long, multi-match tours in the Southern Hemisphere.
It also exposed British rugby’s amateur restrictions, highlighting the value of professionalism for players asked to travel and compete so extensively.
Many of the 1888 tourists would later be involved in the formation of the professional rugby league in 1895, with fourteen eventually playing the new code. The trip left a mark on both sides of the sporting world.
Now, 137 years later, the British and Irish Lions are again in Australia chasing their own slice of history.
Under Andy Farrell they have already secured the Test series with two wins from two, including last weekend’s dramatic 29-26 triumph in Melbourne where Hugo Keenan scored the decisive try in the closing stages.
The Lions now stand one victory away from completing a 3-0 clean sweep in Australia.
The Wallabies squad has been hit hard by injuries. Captain Harry Wilson is leading a side missing several key players, with hooker David Porecki the latest to be ruled out and Brandon Paenga-Amosa called into the squad.
Coach Joe Schmidt has spoken of the need to show composure and belief, while senior players such as Nic White, in what may be his final Test, are urging the team to deliver a performance that restores pride.
