Carlton Football Club - Blues

Thomas Wills, grandson of a convict and educated at England's famous Rugby school, strongly advocated the formation of "foot-ball" clubs to promote the maintenance of fitness levels for the cricket season.

The cricket clubs of the colony of Victoria took up Wills' advice, with the Carlton Cricket Club meeting in 1864 to form a football club for its flannelled fools. There has been considerable debate for more than a century of the identityof Carlton's first president, but it now is generally accepted that a MrRobert McFarland, who had scored the Carlton's Cricket Club's first century, was the inaugural supremo. After all, McFarland had signed off the football club's first annual report.

Carlton played 10 games in its inaugural season of 1864, but with only one victory. Its fledgling status could be gauged by the fact that it did not even have a uniform. Instead, players turned up to matches in cricket whites, with only their orange and blue caps distinguising them from the opposition. Soon, however, the Carlton Football Club adopted the use of dark navy blue shirts and blue and white hooped socks, earning it the nicknames "the Butchers".

See below for official and unofficial club web links.

Web Link: Carlton Football Club - Blues