scored with 20*. Victoria won by 69 runs. The Melbourne media gave Wills the sobriquet "Great Gun of the Colony". A British correspondent called him "a cricketer born". The Sydney press, championing Wills as a native New South Welshman, agreed: Wills remained an influential figure in Australian football from 1859 to 1860. While he fought for the adoption of several Rugby School customs—such as a free kick for marking, the use of an oval-shaped ball, and (unsuccessfully) a crossbar—he pushed the game in new directions as a captain and tactician. During an 1860 match, he used positional play to exploit the code's lack of an offside law, at which point, according to James Coventry, "the full potential of the sport started to be realised". At Wills' insistence, his cousin H. C. A. Harrison took up football in 1859, and quickly became a leading player and captain. Harrison venerated Wills, terming him "the beau-ideal of an athlete"—high praise given Harrison's status as the champion runner of Victoria. Their presence in Geelong fuelled a local craze for football and helped ensure during the game's early years the supremacy of the Geelong Football Club, which Wills captained in 1860. In an era when players moved freely among clubs, he still occasionally captained, and served on the committee of Melbourne, and in 1860, became the first captain and secretary of the Richmond Football Club (no connection with today's AFL club). The code underwent revisions around this time, principally in response to the on-field actions of dominant players. "And there were none more dominant than Wills and Harrison", writes Coventry. Queensland With plans underway for the first tour of Australia by an English cricket team, Wills announced his retirement from sport. At his father's beckoning, Wills agreed to leave Victoria to help found and manage a new family station, Cullin-la-ringo, on the Nogoa River in outback Queensland. He prepared for six months in country Victoria where learnt the crafts of a squatter. In his will, Horatio—showing a "deep understanding" of Tom's personality—wrote that his son would be removed from the station and receive a diminished inheritance in the event of "misconducting himself" as manager. In January 1861, Tom, Horatio and a party of employees and their families travelled by ship to Brisbane, disembarked in Moreton Bay, and then, with livestock and supplies, set out on an eight-month trek through Queensland's rugged interior. Food was scarce