Earliest known footage of Australian Rules Football in Tasmania

These film fragments represent the earliest known surviving moving images of Tasmanian Australian Rules football action, filmed in 1911.

This film documents the clash to decide the 1911 Tasmanian State Premiership between the premiers of the Northern (NTFA) and Southern (TFL) leagues. Cameras were present along with nearly 6000 spectators at Hobart's Tasmanian Cricket Association (TCA) Ground on Saturday 9 September 1911 to witness Cananore and North Launceston battle for the state's top football honours. The contest was a one-sided affair with southern champion Cananore victorious by 104 points, claiming their third consecutive State Premiership. The final score was Cananore 16 18 114, North Launceston 1 4 10.

The surviving three minutes consists of four brief segments located within two reels of 35mm nitrate film. These segments were not in their correct chronological order and had been spliced between sequences from other Tasmanian events such as a religious service, an athletics steeplechase event, a group of motoring enthusiasts and a soldiers' march. The footage presented here is therefore an attempt to edit the four isolated film fragments back into an approximation of their original correct running order. The original duration of the film of this match remains unknown at present but is likely to have been 6-10 minutes.