While I agree with your point that Canadian Football is distinct, Aussie Rules is further from Rugby than Canadian Football is from Rugby and thus Canadian and American Football are much more similar than Aussie Rules is to Rugby.
Aussie Rules is played 18 per side. The teams do not line up onside opposed to each other but rather spread across the whole field. The field is a giant oval that dwarfs a Canadian field or Rugby pitch. There are no end zones. There are no trys/touchdowns… scores are only made by directing the ball through the goal post assembly. The ball is not put into play by scrimmage or kickoffs or scrummage or rucks or lineouts… Rather it is bounced by the referee in a sort of basketball-esque tip off. The ball is passed by punching it or kicking to your own players. Kicks caught in the air result in a free kick.
A better analogy is Rugby League vs Rugby Union. I think those sports have a similar degree of difference to Anerican/Canadian football.
On that note, I read somewhere (something written by a sports historian) that Canadian football in the first part of the 20th Century (after Burnside’s rules and before the forward pass, i.e. 1905 - 1920s) resembled modern rugby league than any other game.
Of course, since the '50s, the game has progressively looked more and more like the American game, but it still uses many rules that go back to it’s rugby roots (unlike US football).
Australian rules have casual links to rugby at best. Australian football had some influences from rugby but was never literally rugby as early Canadian football was. The earliest Australian football codes neglected to adopt the concept of offside for instance.
The modern game is 18 per side on an oval with scoring only by way of directing the ball to the goal posts. It’s like a sort of full contact rugbyish basketball.
Canadian football is a direct descendant of rugby as is American football. Canadian football maintained many of the elements of rugby (approximate field size, many kicking rules) while adopting the American modifications (down-distance scrimmage, forward pass, protective equipment) of the game in the early to mid 20th century.
Unlike Aussie rules, Canadian football is played on a rectangular field like rugby. Plays start with everyone onside like rugby. And scoring can come by way of both a kick on the goal posts and by carrying the ball over the goal line like rugby.
Great summary with one key point of clarification and agreement
Aussie rules derives from circa 1859 as the penal colony that was Australia was settled. At the time football resembled more soccer than rugby in most forms of the game including in the US and UK though in the UK the foundations of rugby and soccer were formalized soon afterwards in 1863.
Those formalities did not carry over fully to other nations in the Anglosphere including Australia and the US plus in part Ireland.
The games as we know them in the US and Ireland borrowed elements from both rugby and soccer.
What we see in Aussie rules today developed well over a century does not appear to have derived from rugby though perhaps any given changes in any code might appear so along with various influences.
What we see in Aussie rules resembles in my view more early, informal football as played in especially the US and UK before the formalization of the rules of American football in the US and rugby and soccer in the UK respectively.
And not being a Brit I must admit I was never caned in school. But Miss K. did break a pointer over my head in grade seven. I suspect she was appalled by the deed. So was I. Had my parents heard anything at all about that incident my ass would have been grass.
And that perhaps may be why I have a pretty solid grasp of geography now (as well as more prosaic subjects such as mathematics and Latin).
