On Saturday 23 July 1898, the Melbourne weekly newspaper The Leader published The Footballers' Alphabet.
The poem, which had been written by its influential (Australian Rules) football correspondent, "Follower",[1] delivered a brief comment on a number of the most prominent Australian Rules footballers playing in Melbourne in 1898 -- the second year of the VFL competition -- presented in the alphabetical order of their family names.
[2] Given the poem’s subject and its novelty, it was very popular, and it was republished in a number of different newspapers, including The Age,[3] and The Ovens and Murray Advertiser.
[4] A pastiche of the poem, centred on the players of the Sunbury Football Club in the Yorke Peninsula, was published in 1920,[5] and another, centred on the players in the Adelaide (SAFL) competition, was published in 1925.
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