[1] He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1845 to 1848,[3] before deciding to travel to the British colony of Victoria, where he ended up living for the remainder of his life.
[5] Future collaborators in the codifying of Australian football's laws, Tom Wills and William Hammersley, also played in the match.
[9] On 17 May 1859, Thompson, along with Tom Wills, Thomas H. Smith and William Hammersley (with some sources also including Wills' cousin H. C. A. Harrison), co-founded the Melbourne Football Club, the first ever Australian rules football club, of which he was inaugural secretary, at the Parade Hotel in East Melbourne.
[10][11] Thompson played with the Melbourne Football Club for many years and during this time he also contributed to updating the laws of the game.
[12] Thompson wrote for Melbourne-based newspaper, The Argus, for many years, contributing a weekly sports column, generally writing about cricket in the summer and football in the winter.
Harrison, but it can be safely said that it was driven by a diverse collective of two journalists (Thompson and Hammersley), a teacher from Melbourne's Scotch College, Thomas Smith, and ... the hotelier, Jerry Bryant.