A football game was purchased by the Art Gallery of Ballarat when the special character of Drysdale’s work, and its seminal place in depicting the Australian landscape, was still to be recognised. He was encouraged by his teacher George Bell to find inspiration in his surroundings, and subsequently produced work which reflected his love of the land. Drysdale, together with Peter Purves Smith and Eric Thake, introduced a surrealistic element to Australian landscape painting, as can be seen in A football game, where the ground recedes rapidly from the bottom edge to a low horizon under an immense sky.