Editing Australian rules football (section)

===Spread to other colonies===
[[File:Intercolonial Football Match 1879.jpg|left|thumb|Engraving of the first intercolonial football match between Victoria and South Australia, [[East Melbourne Cricket Ground]], 1879]]
Football became organised in [[Australian rules football in South Australia|South Australia]] in 1860 with the formation of the [[Adelaide Football Club (SAFA)|Adelaide Football Club]], the oldest football club in Australia outside Victoria.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last1=Pill|first1=Shane|last2=Frost|first2=Lionel|date=17 January 2016|title=R.E.N. Twopeny and the Establishment of Australian Football in Adelaide|journal=The International Journal of the History of Sport|volume=33|issue=8|pages=797–812|doi=10.1080/09523367.2016.1173033|s2cid=147807924}}</ref> It devised its own rules, and, along with other [[Adelaide]]-based clubs, played a variety of codes until 1876, when they uniformly adopted most of the Victorian rules, with South Australian football pioneer [[Charles Kingston]] noting their similarity to "the old Adelaide rules".{{sfn|Hibbins|Ruddell|2010|pp=22–24}} Similarly, [[Australian rules football in Tasmania|Tasmania]]n clubs quarrelled over different rules until they adopted a slightly modified version of the Victorian game in 1879.{{sfn|Hibbins|Ruddell|2010|p=24}} The [[SANFL|South Australian Football Association]] (SAFA), the sport's first [[sports governing body|governing body]], formed on 30 April 1877, firmly establishing Victorian rules as the preferred code in that colony.{{sfn|Hibbins|Ruddell|2010|pp=22–23}} The [[Victorian Football Association]] (VFA) formed the following month.

[[File:Carlton Footballer George Coulthard.jpg|thumb|upright|[[George Coulthard]], one of the first players to attain Australia-wide celebrity]]
Clubs began touring the colonies in the late 1870s, and in 1879 the first [[interstate matches in Australian rules football|intercolonial match]] took place in Melbourne between [[Victoria Australian rules football team|Victoria]] and [[South Australia Australian rules football team|South Australia]].{{sfn|Blainey|2010|pp=107–108}} In 1883, delegates representing the football associations of South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and [[Australian rules football in Queensland|Queensland]] met to standardise the code across Australia.{{sfn|Hibbins|Ruddell|2010|p=24}} New rules such as [[holding the ball]] led to a "golden era" of fast, long-kicking and [[spectacular mark|high-marking]] football in the 1880s, a time which also saw players such as [[George Coulthard]] achieve superstardom, as well as the rise of [[professional sports|professionalism]], particularly in Victoria and [[Australian rules football in Western Australia|Western Australia]], where the code took hold during [[Western Australian gold rush|a series of gold rushes]].{{sfn|Pennings|2013}} Likewise, when [[Australian rules football in New Zealand|New Zealand]] experienced [[Otago Gold Rush|a gold rush]], the sport arrived with a rapid influx of Australian miners. Now known as Australian rules or Australasian rules, the sport became the first football code to develop mass spectator appeal,{{sfn|Blainey|2010|pp=107–108}} attracting world record attendances for sports viewing and gaining a reputation as "the people's game".{{sfn|Pennings|2013}}

Australian rules football reached Queensland and [[Australian rules football in New South Wales|New South Wales]] as early as 1866;{{sfn|de Moore|Hess|Nicholson|Stewart|2021|pp=186–188}} the sport experienced a period of dominance in the former,<ref>Pramberg, Bernie (15 June 2015). [http://www.couriermail.com.au/sport/opinion/love-of-the-game-aussie-rules-a-dominant-sport-in-early-queensland/news-story/bb66b40691563e07eef396719eaca23a "Love of the Game: Aussie rules a dominant sport in early Queensland"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220311200915/https://www.couriermail.com.au/sport/opinion/love-of-the-game-aussie-rules-a-dominant-sport-in-early-queensland/news-story/bb66b40691563e07eef396719eaca23a |date=11 March 2022 }}, ''[[The Courier-Mail]]''. Retrieved 24 April 2016.</ref> and in the latter, several regions remain strongholds of Australian rules, such as the [[Riverina]]. However, by the late 1880s, [[rugby football]] had become the dominant code in both colonies, as well as in New Zealand. This shift was largely due to rugby's spread with British migration, [[Australian regional rivalries|regional rivalries]] and the lack of strong local governing bodies. In the case of [[Sydney]], denial of access to grounds, the influence of university headmasters from Britain who favoured rugby, and the loss of players to other codes inhibited the game's growth.<ref>Healy, Matthew (2002). ''[https://nswfootballhistory.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/HardSell.pdf Hard Sell: Australian Football in Sydney]'' (PDF). {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180318215415/https://nswfootballhistory.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/HardSell.pdf |date=18 March 2018 }}. Melbourne, Vic.: Victoria University. pp. 20–28.</ref>