No code should own the term 'football'

Dave - despite that soccer is a summer olympic sport - - I think you'll find that 'football' season is across the winter months.........what the HAL does here in Australia (supposedly to fit into an 'international calendar', ........which is sickly enough to put 'australia' at the rrrr's end of considerations.......but, also, as we know, to avoid head to head confrontation with more established domestic codes) is NOT 'football season'.

Amon, take your rah rah glasses off and shove them up your .....

Amon Using your analogy,rugby union has only one country with its game as the national sport (NZ) and a couple of PIslands.Is that a problem? No! Thought not. If you look up the term international(meaning games between countries):ie England Australia,France and NZ for starters,your comments are absurd,when you state rl has no international game.International schedules have been set up for PNG,Samoa,Tinga and Fiji and rl playing countries in Europe for 2009. Rugby league missed the boat LOL.It is so clueless(sic) that it obtained stg29,408,341 from Sport England,as compared to the home of rugby union stg30,724,908 for the 2009-2103 period,because of their development work and tremendous grassroots growth throughout England. The minor association with expats is laughable on 2 counts,because you need to get locals involved (with the assist of expats)as rl is doing ,and secondly because just about every football code i know of ,started up in other countries through the influence of expats.Each country playing rugby league is full of local players. Backwater game please, growing likewildfire in wales with a pro team the Crusaders, a pro team Les Catalans from France in the ESL and Toulouse in the english National League. New development officers have been appointed for Europe and counries like Jamaica,Cook Islands,Tonga already match union for popularity. Even in Sth africa after years of slow growth ,their are now 20 clubs and the game is getting into the schools. If that is missing the boat,then I will enjoy time on dry land.It is called growth,something many companies around the world ATM would love to achieve. Anyone can be dismissive,if they do little research which appears to be found wanting in your argument.It(rl) is actually played in just under 30 countries,not your cynical 50?

treizistes: I would call PNG and their national sport a one-off! PNG may be the only country to have League as it's national sport? LMAO. Maybe Samoa???? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA. Sorry to be harsh to your sport but..RL has no international game... and never really will. It's played in 50 countries? 45 of them may have minor associations filled with expats.. but they can hardly be counted! Rugby League's missed the boat. It will forever be confined to a backwater game.

Jaredsbro Steffy Rugby’s (Union) just trying to play foil to FIFA’s parry. It’s simple logistics, as Soccer and Rugby Union are played in many many countries on earth (both have at least 100 countries who are fully members or associate members of their international organisations), rather than being largely confined to a certain geographic location or cultural association (like Rugby League which is indigenous nowhere but is played in over fifty countries (by expats pretty much) if I have my numbers right. It’s easier to play second fiddle and gain traction than to compete head to head and be left in the dust by the few codes (of any sport) which actually permeate around the entire globe.: What a heap of garbage, you have no idea about RL, expats my arse. And what would you call PNG and their national sport?

Errr football season is just running up to a very exciting conclusion...Go Victory!!

Aint cricket a grand sport? Bring on the footy season.

Jaredsbro - re the topic - - am still working my way thru the Tom Wills biography........a really good read (and hardly anything about football thus far.......much more about A. early Australia, B. school of Rugby, C. cricket, D. cricket/social hierarchies/politics, E. QLD stations and muderous liaisons with the black fellas (not saying which way and by whom). at any rate...........there's gotta be a movie or a mini series at some point about Mr T.W.Wills.

curious about the 'PC' angle. political correctness.............hmmmmmmm........ is it politically correct to NOT hold Christmas in an Australian school as that we might offend someone recently emmigrated from a non-christian country??.........at what point will we re-name the easter long weekend the 'non denominational reflective or non-reflective long weekend'? Is it PC on MY behalf to actually seek to PROTECT local 'house rules'? I'd have thought that was actually being NON PC??? Anyway...........that PC angle seemed to fade out...........I'm not trying to ressurect it.......just state my position rather than allow supposition of my position.

Been away for the week (down in South Gippsland - - Toora, looking across Corner Inlet to Wilson's Prom..........ah........(just a touch, just a touch of paradise - - - - btw - the 'Grand Ridge Road' in the middle section - Balook to Mirboo East - - is more Grand Ridge than Grand Road - - - but.......if anyone is ever in Yarram......drive from there up the Tarra Valley.........one of the best drives I've done anywhere in Australia - - KB......even better than the Currumbin Valley drive!!!). Millster - exactly (re. something to allow people to get it off their chests over the holiday period...........if this thread had not been provided........it'd have been necessary to invent it)

Time heals all wounds...maybe? But whenever you have issues of power (and the rights we have of/to being our own agents) you always get people who are threatened. I mean there are some who are threatened by other races/cultures...and some in here have bandied around such words as Xenophobes/ racist/ dogmatic (my self included) but if this post is anything to go by it might hep if we had a look at this other angle, rather than being a naive (or otherwise) relativist. I reckon you're only offended by this use of football (as in a literal description of a single type of football rather than the generic or family name) if you are the kind of black and white person (no racist imagery needed tho) who likes their footy in the winter and their cricket in the summer. Now most people of my generation seem less this way inclined and I bet that would be as much the case in NSW as Vic. The media have their own agendas but so do we all. It tends to be the older people (like those who use such phrases as Telephonescope eh mahony ;) ) who refuse to change their mind which is their choice, tho they would say there is no choice to make... Most of us here seem interested in more than just the traditional winter/summer sport duality...or at least I am. I like five 'winter' sports (Rugby U/L Australian rules, Association Football [tho it's still not my fav] and American Football). I also like two 'summer' sports (Cricket and Baseball) and I'm trying to get into Tennis. As well as that I like non-climatic sports such as Basketball and Netball. In this case it's just not practical calling my fav winter sports football, w/e context I'm in as invariably when I talk about one of the football codes I most often end up talking about other football codes as well. But I might be an exceptional case. Perhaps the wisest thing to say would be that there is indeed a noticeable generational gap to this debate? Ethnicity might have had something to do with it a few gens ago, but I'd be scratching my head about it now...

Quote: In response to mahony’s well complied prose I offer this retort. I believe that the unstated but underlying premise of his argument is that as more people immigrate to Australia they will bring with them their understanding of Soccer from their own countries. This point is fact. However, what mahony fails to grasp in my opinion is what has transpired in the recent past, which is the adoption of Australian Rules football as the preferred choice of sport over soccer. The facts speak for themselves. AFL attendances are up as is participation on the back of increased immigration to Australia. What mahony doesn’t take into account in my opinion is that when people move to a new country maybe they seek out the uniqueness of their new residence at the expense of the past they are willingly leaving behind. Response: In response to the above I simply make the argument that Australian culture is impacted in ways beyond physical one-way immigration. Even allowing for the very reasonable argument that many immigrants to Australia have TRADITIONALLY adopted the term "soccer" for a range of social reasons, as time passes, the ways in which Australian culture is impacted, and the speed at which it is impacted only increases (mass/niche media, Internet, recreational/professional travel and emigration the 'other' way). An interesting thing to measure would be how recent migrants (i.e. post 1970) perceive the terms "soccer" and "football". I would also add that it is not so much that I failed to take account of the above opinion - rather that I find it at odds with the observable data. While Australia has a long way to go in resolving this particular cultural debate - one need only attend a soccer match and compare this experience with attending any other code of football to see how diversity (a manifestation of 'cultural migration' in all of its variants) of the spectators varies greatly. There is a reason a soccer crowd looks like the United Nations and a reason a game played in every single country on Earth is likely, over time, to define its own nomenclature. I find the "popularity" argument even less persuasive than the "migrants like to integrate" argument because of the variety of ways in which popularity changes over time and can be measured (league attendance, participation, TV ratings, gambling revenue, local/aggregate measurement). To argue that soccer will not over time come to 'own' the term "football" in a cultural sense is somewhat akin to arguing that another modern (and closely related) global cultural phenomenon is still referred to in polite society as the: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephonoscope

J’bro, by the way I’m not really a football fanatic... I'm Chinese and it FIFA want to own the name Football; well to hell with them, let them have it.. my code is "Cuju" or "kick the ball with foot" And I'll be damn if someone is going to force me to call my code that English imperialist name "Football" ... :lol: (my last post more interesting articles now to comment on.. shea shea ) ~~~~~~~ KB

J'bro - interesting post. Having read (ok skimmed) the 400+ posts above my one comment is that we are somewhat lost in formality. We are also making ourselves out to be totally inflexible. I am in the camp that - in the main - thinks that the word football should be interpreted as meaning association football. But I started December in Melbourne, and ended it in Atlanta. I did not find it to be a massive affront to hear the word football used for AFL and Gridiron respectively in those locales. At worst it was to me a slighly parochial quaint idiocyncrasy. Nor did any of tthe locals get offended at my occasional "football... ummm that is the soccer variety..." self-correction. As I wrote way way earlier on this thread I firmly belive that the linguistic norms will establish themselves over the next 20-30 years and that irrespective of how we might rant and rave here an answer will emerge and be commonly accepted. In the meantime I find it no more offensive that AFL is called football in Melbourne than that my swimmers are called bathers when I'm on the beach in Perth. All this to say that I don't think there is any need for aggro on this issue. I have great faith that time, and the ebb and flow of each game's evolution on the Australian and world stage, will sort it out just fine in due course.

Yes ingenious isn't it? By the way MC I love this kind of topic, if you ever start another one I'll be hovering round like a vulture and that's a promise ;) Yeah just because it looks like the Soccer football doesn't mean the game resembled Association Football even as it was played in 1863. There's not sufficient evidence from History's left-overs to make a logical leap from a ball in the rafters connected with Harrow to being a part of ball-game that is an ancestor of Association Football. We only have documented sources from the Nineteenth Century (and some of them are dodgy too) so trying to find the ancestor is not a good place to start to legitimate Association Football. Your best bet is to do what FIFA did, which was to call it what the English called it as it was the English and not FIFA who spread the game round the world...take note AFL :D Which is to say that majority should rule, but Democracy's only a less-evil way of ruling the world By the way KB I'm not really an Australian Rules football fanatic, I like the game but I'm simply trying to debate what I think is an issue of importance to me personally. Plenty of people just want the easiest option, but that's never any good for me. I have the same issue with Rugby League/ American Football fans referring to their game with a capital F. It suggests arrogance as well as ignorance as well as apathy towards the truth of the matter Having said that Soccer has the most reason of all sports to call itself Football and virtually everyone wouldn't care too much about this. And It seems natural that Soccer is the heir to Medieval Football as its perimeters as a game haven't really evolved beyond the live-ball (mostly) kicking contest that existed prior to the death of Medieval Football. Still doesn't mean it owns the term, just like I own the term Robinson (my last name). That's what I don't think you realise KB and others, Soccer was not the first game of football that there ever was. It was created out of the ashes of the old-style Medieval (mob) football, and most of Soccer's elements were an attempt to create an idealised version of these older styles of football. The 'best' part of these games were perceived to be the dribbling and the kicking contests and so that's what Association Football became. It was elected democratically and like the Mormons shipping over to what would become Salt Lake City, other codes were elected into being as a response to the FA's tightening of the rules/tactics. But I think what's most important to remember is that Association Football appeals to something pretty deep within our psyches, something perhaps universal (or as close as you'll ever get). In my opinion it best resembles the equilibrium between staticness (or stoicism) and dynanism/manoeverability that people and xcultures require in a pass time. Why else is it so popular? Sorry for carrying on like this, but the germ of creation of all other codes of football started well before the Public School got their grubby hands on our beautiful games. It was those who has a different version of what football meant/looked like that 'broke away' Thus the idea of football can only ever be subjective.

This debate was never going to go well :-) MC - congrats for poking the hornets nest well enough to last the entire holiday week!

Forgetmenot, never expected to watch marn grook in its pure form only the modern version of it; as we do in the modern game of football .. ~~~~~~~~~ KB

Koala Bear, I dont think Marn Grook is played in its pure form anywhere anymore. So you wont be watching Marngrook.

Forgetmenot, So if on a Saturday afternoon and I'm watching a game of Aussie Rules.. I 'm watching a game of Marn Grook .. Is that what you are trying to say...? ~~~~~~~~~ KB

Koala Bear, If i find a spear on a frozen human from hundreds of thousands of years ago, it doesnt mean they used it as a spear or even called it a spear. That is the same argument as your football in the Stirling Rafters. Also the Harrow School website refers to soccer as ... soccer. Better write them a letter informing them of globalisation, and the incorrect usage eh?