Such a connection was first debunked by Leonie Sandercock and Ian Turner;[4] however, the first thorough investigation into a link was conducted by Geoffrey Blainey in 1989,[5] concluding that it was nothing more than a myth.
The game was played in Thebarton, by people of the local Irish community in 1843 to celebrate St Patrick's Day.
The Southern Australian had an advert published on 17 March 1873 on page 3, last column, 3rd advertisement, promoting the game ( https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/71616441 ).
One observer in the mid-19th century, Father W. Ferris, described two main forms of caid during this period: the "field game" in which the object was to put the ball through arch-like goals, formed from the boughs of two trees, and; the epic "cross-country game" which took up most of the daylight hours of a Sunday on which it was played, and was won by one team taking the ball across a parish boundary.
It was usually played by teams of unlimited numbers, representing communities, until a clear result was achieved or the players became too exhausted to continue.
An inter-parish mob football game similar to cnapan called Hyrlîan (In English Hurling) is still played in Cornwall on dates that coincide with religious festivals such as Shrove Tuesday.
A link between Caid and Gaelic football is spurious at best and has since been debunked by Irish historians from as early as the emergence of the modern code.
[12] Geoffrey Blainey in 2010 wrote:[13] If an historian of football wishes to press the argument that one code must have copied the other, then this conclusion would be difficult to escape: the style of play which Gaelic and Australian football share today was visible in Australia long before it was visible in Ireland.