lost

Melbourne Sporting Globe

mark

mark the ball after catching a forward pass

December 7, 1941. A date that would live in infamy.World War II was a dark time for football in America. Fear of a Japanese attack on the California coast moved the 1942 Rose Bowl to Durham, North Carolina . Oregon State beat Duke in that game, 20-16. (Yes, Duke actuallya football game. Hard to fathom, I know...)In 1943, the Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers had lost so many players to military enrollment that they had to merge for a season and play as the "Steagles." Pittsburgh then merged operations for a year with the Chicago Cardinals in 1944. Winning football games took a back seat to winning the war.Even in dark times, though, there are bright moments, and for some American GI's stationed in Australia, those moments came when playing football -- but not necessarily their own football...American servicemen arrived in Australia shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and by mid-1942, as many as 30,000 Americans were stationed in Melbourne , and more were stationed in Brisbane, where General Douglas MacArthur moved his headquarters in early 1943. The Australian soldiers didn't like the Americans very much, in no small part because they had more money, better uniforms, and much more charm around the local ladies.Looking for some common ground, the Americans decided to reach out to the locals with a series of football exhibitions to help support local war charities. The local, though, didn't like American football very much -- too much time in between plays, too many strange rules and formations, etc. Observers seemed to enjoy watching forward passes, but they just didn't happen enough to keep people's interestThe Australian soldiers saw that as an opportunity to introduce their form of football to the visitors, and the Americans suddenly understood why the Aussies seemed so bored by American football. Australian football had much more freedom of movement and nonstop action than their game. They decided to try competing with their Australian hosts at Australian football.That proved to be a bad idea. Aussie Rules is a kicking game, and by the early 40s, kicking had already become a relic in American football. The shape of the football changed in 1934 to help quarterbacks improve the accuracy of their forward passes, and drop kicking had been replaced with placekicking. So the Aussies were using their kicking skills to kick the Americans' butts up and down the oval pitch.Clearly, something had to be done to fix this crisis in competitive balance. That's when Ern Cowley, a former Aussie Rules hero who at the time was baseball editor of the, came up with a brilliant idea...One of the central tenets of Australian football is the. Any player who catches a kick that's 15 yards or longer can "mark the ball" and take a free kick from behind the spot of the catch. Cowley, who knew that the Americans were much better at passing the ball than kicking it, created a game based on Aussie Rules that allowed players toThus was born Austus , a hybrid of Australian and American football games that allowed the servicemen from different countries to play football against each other. Austus matches began to draw big crowds in 1943, in part because of the game's novelty, but also because of the much more balanced competition. The Australians continued to kick, but the Americans proved highly accurate with the pass, which wowed the spectators and made for very close and very exciting matches. Austus matches allowed both countries' servicemen raise large sums of money for various war charities and helped bring the two countries a little closer together.There was hope that Austus matches would continue after the war, but alas, that was not to be. Once American forces returned home, they resumed playing American football, and the Australians went back to playing Aussie Rules. Austus faded into a remote corner of history and was forgotten.Then again, perhaps it's not too late for an Austus revival. Perhaps we could pit the best players in the National Football League against the best players in the Australian Football League in a game that played to both of their strengths. It might be fun to dust off this old, forgotten football code and breathe some new life into it. If nothing else, it would be a fitting tribute to a generation that gave so many lives to the war effort and still managed to find common ground with each other on the football field.