Records of the early days of Australian Football in New Zealand are sketchy.

But it appears that the game was played there while the sport was in its infancy.

The sport’s earliest historian C.C Mullen wrote that in July 1875 three football clubs in Christchurch and two from Wellington who played their own form of football wrote to Victoria to ask about the finer points of “Victorian Rules” as the game was referred to in those times. There were plans to invite Melbourne and Geelong to visit the Dominion and it was hoped that Henry Harrison and Tom wills would make the trip to give lectures on the game.

Other sources say that a form of football was played a few years earlier in 1868 when the Nelson football club played a hybrid version of Victorian and soccer rules.

By the late 1880s a Maori Rugby team visited Victoria as part of a year long tour of United Kingdom and Australia. They played eight games under “Victorian Rules”, winning three and losing five.

One of those games was on 1 June 1889 against St Kilda. The Saints won with a score of 6 goals 7 behinds to 1 goal 6 behinds. The Argus was sympathetic, saying “The difference between the Rugby game to which the Maoris are accustomed , and the Australian game is as great as baseball and cricket and it is not to be expected that the New Zealanders should become experts at it with so little practice as they have had.” 

In the early 1890s Victoria was hard hit by economic depression and out of work Victorians headed to New Zealand in search of employment. Mullen wrote that there were 44 clubs playing Victorian Rules across New Zealand.

The game had its peaks and troughs and seems to have fallen away until a revival in 1903. Vic Cumberland – the famous Saint ruckman was one of many players who crossed the Tasman for work. He was only there for a couple of years but the game was gathering in strength and by 1908 New Zealand sent a team to the first National Football Carnival featuring teams from all Australian states. The game was progressing well, but the First World War seems to have put an end to that and for many years  the game virtually disappeared in New Zealand.