way to hope as Wills promised to restore the colony's glory, and in February 1876 he led the Victoria XI onto the Albert Ground. Batting last in the order, he went for 0 and 4 and failed to take a wicket despite bowling the most overs of his side. The media blamed him for Victoria's 195-run loss. In turn, he blamed his teammates. Final years By 1877, Wills' cricket career "had become a series of petty disputes in petty games" of "ever-deteriorating standards." No longer an office-bearer with Corio, he moved amongst lower-level clubs in the Geelong area, earning scraps of money wherever he could. In a brief postscript to one of several rejected applications for employment at the MCC, Wills gave voice to old cricketers "left in the cold", an "unmistakable backhander for the club" according to de Moore. He continues: "To see Wills simply as a beggar would be to misunderstand him." After retiring as a footballer, Wills turned to umpiring and committee work, and despite his continued slide into debt, donated money and trophies for football competitions. He served as Geelong's vice-president from 1873 to 1876, and briefly as club delegate after the 1877 formation of the Victorian Football Association (VFA), but was dropped for unknown reasons. During the 1878 VFA season, he acted as central umpire, and defended his adjudication of a June match between Carlton and Albert Park in what would be his last public letter. That year, Wills, broke and hounded by creditors, began selling land in Geelong to help clear his debt, and moved with Barbor to South Melbourne. He held no positions of power at the South Melbourne Cricket Club and only occasionally appeared in local team lists, but managed to convince the club to open its ground to football in winter as a means of improving the turf's durability. Other clubs soon followed South Melbourne's example as football adapted to an oval-shaped field in the late 1870s. By this stage, the sport had spread throughout Australasia with Melbourne matches attracting the world's largest football crowds yet seen. In late 1878, the MCC rejected Wills' last application for employment, and his dwindling income from cricket was "finally asphyxiated". From February 1879 onwards, Wills lived with Barbor in Heidelberg, a small village on the margins of Melbourne. His life that year went largely unrecorded, and he made only two trips outside of Heidelberg