Talk:Football/Archive 2

message: I agree with some of the above comments, but would like to make a few points:
1. A "league" can be a generic word meaning an organisation, as in the Temperance League, the Anti-Nazi League or the Canadian Football League, rather than necessarily being a competition. The fact that there was no Premier League prior to 1992, does not mean that that there was no "league" in the generic sense.
:Fair enough. dictionary.com says - League - An association of teams or clubs that compete chiefly among themselves. However, to me league suggests a league competition as opposed to a knockout competion, and this didn't appear until the formation of The Football League.
2. Re. the game "not banned" in Ireland: I take your point, but the original par speculated that it was a Norman game, which cannot be said with any certainty either.
:True. Fair to take out the Norman reference altogether. Although I'm sure that I read somewhere about a possible Norman link that led me to write it in the first place.
3. Being very familiar with both Aussie Rules and soccer, I can say out of the 10 substantive Sheffield Rules, only four are at all similar to present day soccer, whereas six are identical or partly similiar to Aussie Rules (not counting the one about caps, although they were worn by Aussie Rules in the early years :-). Of course it doesn't prove a direct link between Sheffield and Aussie Rules, but that's not what I said in the text.
:Ok, ignoring rule 11 about caps, 1,2,6,7,9,10 are all akin to rules in the Association game. Rule 8 can be interpreted as either allowing brief touches of the ball or as banning holding the ball whilst running. For sure these rules could be said to be ancestral to all subsequent games, but they definitely favour the kicking game, but they are a bit of a distraction as far as the Association game is concerned as the rules of Thring and other people at Cambridge were used by the FA.
:: Comments: 1. But it's the absence of offside which makes the Sheffield Rules so different to soccer. 2. Aussie Rules is both "handling" and "kicking". 
4. The fullpointsfooty.net site is an excellent, if still-developing source, in regard to the later history of Aussie Rules, and it's true that the game between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar is a historical red herring. However, Geoffrey Blainey's (1990) A Game of our Own: The Origins of Australian Football (Information Australia, Melbourne) is regarded as fairly authoritative. I don't have a copy with me at the moment but Blainey describes a trial game played by Tom Wills and friends at the "Richmond Paddock" in Melbourne on July 31, 1858. There had to be provisional rules for that to occur. Wills (1836-72) had  been educated at Rugby and had played cricket for Cambridge, so he would have been familiar with many varieties of football played in England in the early 1850s. H.C.A. Harrison was Wills's cousin, they were close in 1858, and they were named in 1906 as official "fathers of the game", but that does appear to have been generous to Harrison. I will do some more digging on him.
: has this to say about the Richmond Paddock game - "There were few rules, just men determined to have a kick. Some had experience of football from English public schools, some had no football experience at all. On the same day, Melbourne Grammar School played football against a group of men who called themselves the St Kilda club and the lack of rules caused a fight that ended the game.". I think this match can be pretty much ignored as far as being a significant date is concerned. It's only real significance is that Wills was involved in it and he was obivously the real driving force behind the development of the Australian game. His influence as you quite rightly point out would have almost certainly been from his experiences in England. Any allusion to a connection between Aussie and Gaelic football is in my opinion a complete red-herring. Aussie rules main influence was clearly the English public school rules, through Wills and presumably others (you yourself point out the similarly between the Aussie rules and the Cambridge rules). I think you definitely have to look at May 1859 with the most significance. In a similar way I have not brought up the fact the Thring and de Winton (both ex-Shrewsbury) established a club with some old Etonians in 1846. They would presumably had some agreed rules to play by. Mintguy (T) 22:45, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: General comments on Cambridge, Sheffield & Australian rules

message: BTW just found this in the History of the FA book.
:The first reference to be found to an oversea organization in the Minutes of The Football Association is on November 5th 1883, when C.W. Alcock read a letter to a Special Committee Meeting held at 28, Paternoster Row. It came from the Anglow-Australia Football Club of Melbourne, and in reply Alcock was instructed to convey to this body the "gratification of the FA Committee at the development of the Association game in the Colonies."  ... The Anglo-Australian Association was admitted to Membership of The FA in 1884. 
:1887: Mr Crawley of the Anglo-Australian Association of Melbourne attended a Council Meeting at 51 Holborn Viaduct, and asked the patronage of The FA for a match to be played at the Oval in aid of the funds of his Association. The Council resolved that they could not see their way to assist. 
:1900: Letters received from The Football Association of Western Australia and the New Zealand FA asking The FA to send out teams to play exhibition matches with the view to popularizing the game.
:1901 (February) Upon the report od the International Selection Committeee, The FA Council decided not to entertain the Australian and New Zealand proposal; also that a suggestion should be made to them that they should take steps to perfect their organization.
::... there's more, but less interesting stuff about the Aussie and New Zealand assocations trying to get tours aranged, but it appears that the FA thought they were a bit Mickey Mouse. But then in 1924 we have this.
1924: Challenge Cup presented by The FA to The Australian Football Association. The Following letter was received by the FA:
 To The Secretary,
 The Football Association
 Dear Sir,
   I beg to acknowledge receipt of your communication in which you
 convey the information that you Council has generously donated to
 Australia a challenge Cup for Competition on Inter-State lines.
   I am directed by my Executive to convey to your Association the
 best thanks of the Football community of Australia.
                                       Yours failthfully
                                       E.S. LUKEMAN
                                            Secretary
                                                Australian F.A.
:Mintguy (T) 22:16, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Development of association football in Australia 

message: There is an error in the transliteration of the Greek word "αρπαστον" in the Ancient Games sub-heading. It's given as "episkyros", but the actual transliteration of that sequence of Greek characters is "arpaston". "episkyros" would be "επισκυρος". I don't know whether the Greek should change or the transliteration. Deadlock (Talk) 16:43, Jul 08, 2004 (UTC)
Hi. It's been a very long time since I wrote that part of the article and I can't remember what the orignal source was. Searching on google for "αρπαστον" brings up a site which has a mirror of the Village pump when I asked a question about those sequence of letters. My question was "Anyone speak Greek? I need to know for a wiki article if 'αρπαστον' would equate to 'pheninda'?" - The respoonse I got said. "I think I've found that it equates to 'episkyros', but could 'pheninda' be a Romanisation of this? " Looking in my EB11 it talks about "επισκυρος". So I'm sure this is correct. It also mentions that the Roman Harpastum is derived from the greek verb "αρπαζω"  (I seize), so I think i muddled these two up. Thanks for your help. Mintguy (T) 17:55, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Greek error