The Carnival offered the chance to have extensive talks on “assimilation of the codes” and for the Kangaroos to play an exhibition match. However, with the limited availability of berths on ships to England, it meant that the ’Roos spent only two days in Melbourne.

The exhibition match was abandoned, but discussions on the merger still proceeded. Later reports refer to a merged game of 15-a-side, all scrums replaced by an open ruck (play-the-ball), an oval field and offside laws applying “inside a section corresponding to the Rugby twenty-five.” The combined game would provide the openness of Australian football, but also allow for the hard rough-and-tumble tackling of the rugby codes, and some application of offside laws.

No agreement, though, could be reached in the limited time, but the parties agreed to resume talks once Giltinan had sounded out English rugby league officials and returned home in April 1909.

It was a tantalisingly close opportunity missed – Giltinan was soon bankrupted by poor gate takings from the Kangaroo tour after it was dealt the worst English winter in living memory. Had the fusion succeeded, the combined code would have out-scaled soccer and rugby union to the extent that they would have been fortunate to survive, let alone thrive. Rugby union in New Zealand too, bereft of any Australian competition, may well have joined the new code.

Though further attempts were made to merge rugby league and Australian rules (in 1914 and 1933), the passing of each year, with changes in rules and tactics, drew the codes further apart. The cultures and history of each were also firmly established, making it practically impossible for universal agreement for a merger.

Though the plethora of high crosskicks in today’s NRL – where the attacking players soar into the air alongside the defending backs in a contest for the football – mimics the signature trait of Aussie rules, the play-the- ball and held rules are no longer applied in rugby league with the ruthlessness of the AFL.

League’s modern “contest” at the play-the-ball has retreated back to its rugby union origins of wrestling and mauling the man as much as the ball, and the two rugby codes are now as close to each other on the football evolution tree as they have ever been.

Where once it seemed plausible to merge rugby league and Australian rules, today the only conceivable merger on the horizon is the two rugby codes. Yet even that is remote.

Unless total support for a merger exists at all levels of both codes, there would be nothing to stop the two traditional games continuing to be played in competition to the merged code. All of which would leave us with a fifth football code, further dividing the footy resources of our nation.

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