Talk:Football (word)/Archive 1

message: I can't see the attempts to use the word football to mean soccer catching on in Oz. There was an article on Fox about the opening round of the A-League, specifically the game at Lang Park, where the 20,000 odd crowd was descibed as "the largest ever attendance for a domestic football match in Australia". Even in context that causes a double-take, without context it's just nonsense. --Paul 12:06, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps a good, arbitrary way of differentiating the names of codes would be the way schools do it. In my school (and I assume most others) you could join the rugby league team, rugby union team, Aussie rules team or soccer team. There was no football team. I think 'football' and 'footy' are nothing more than colloquialisms in Australia. Perhaps this article should reflect that.--Jeff79 03:57, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Australia 

message: I dissagree with GordyB's statment in #Soccer AM that "Soccer is a term that is generally disliked in the UK". I have used the word soccer and football all my life and I have not had one person correct me for using either word in the UK. Both are understood and used in context. The idea that one little known punk band which had a minor hit with a song is representative of the attitude in the UK in general is not encyclopaedic. Even if every person who regularly attended soccer matches every weekend in the UK was to object to the term soccer, (which I would seriously doubt) that would still be a minority of the UK population. --Philip Baird Shearer 11:33, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Like other countries, in the UK an unqualified mention of football tends to refer to the most popular footballing sport in the country, that in the case of the UK is association football. However the term soccer is used by some and understood by all. For fans who are more interested in other codes of football, within their sporting community, the use the term football may refer to their own code and they may call association football soccer for brevity and clarity. However even within such sporting communities an unqualified mention of football would be a reference to association football.
There may be a need to explain how the word football is used in different areas of the UK. For example usage in South Wales (where rugby union dominates) may be different from the English Midlands (an area of the country where although rugby union is played, the predominant game is Association football), but it really needs someone from South Wales to explain what is the norm, hopefully with some written references.
--Philip Baird Shearer 12:01, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

text: The paragraph is fair. But regarding your "evidence" - You will always find people using the word soccer in Britain. It was coined as slang as is still used as slang for the Association code. If you substitute the word "rugger" for "soccer" you will get similar results. e.g. Rugger girls are KO'd Regarding www.soccerbooks.co.uk I've actually ordered a ferw books from them. There is a very simple reason why that is their URL. They sell more books to Americans that way as a search for "football" will returns loads of stuff about Aamerican football. BTW "Stop spitting soccer stars"  - is just tabloid alliteration. They are very fond of that. "Soccer Star" - "Football Fanatic" etc.. Jooler 09:07, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: United Kingdom non-NPOV

message: :Since it is possible that the normal usages of British English prevail worldwide — as opposed to American English, see international English and list of countries by English speaking population — it is also possible that "football" means Association football among an absolute majority of English-speakers. However, there is no way of proving or disproving such a theory.
Although I would agree with this, as Grant65 wrote, "However, there is no way of proving or disproving such a theory".  I think we may be able to fix it in another way. As association football is the most popular world wide sport and in most languages it is called football, even if for the majority of monoglot English speakers a reference might be to another code, for most people speaking English an unqualified use of the word football would be to association football. --Philip Baird Shearer 08:44, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I know Philip, but do the majority of English speakers worldwide, such as the estimated 200-300 million(!) in China, favour the non-British or British usage of "football"? I'm not sure that we have any way of knowing that. Grant65 | Talk 10:04, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, there is a way of proving or disproving it - we could ask everyone.  It's not practical for us - but it can certainly be done.  However, I think that sentence needs to be removed.  A might be true.  Or else it's false.  I have no idea is not really an encyclopaedic statement.  WilyD 11:42, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

text: There are probably some non-contentious ways that the popularity of the term can be stated. For example, once the cumilative viewing figures of the current world cup are published (along with the viewing populations in different countries) there can be made a factual statement that "as an indication of popularity of the term; among the X million/billion viewers of the 2006 World Cup approximately Y% (or Z hundred million people) use the term football (or a close phonetic equivalent) to mean Association Football." 
Given that *any* term's precise usage is unlikely to ever be 'exact' the best that can be hoped is to refer to "majority" or "generally accepted" and other such words which give an indication of the term's prevelance and widespread use. For the majority of the 200+ country associtations in the FIFA federation (http://www.fifa.com/en/organisation/na/index.html) - themselves comprising a majority of all world countries (http://www.statoids.com/wab.html) - the term "football" is genrally taken to refer to "Association Football".
Another factor is that *even* disregarding the majority of countries which use the "football" term (or phonetically similar word) directly to mean Association Football, the term is *recognised*  as meaning Association Football even by countries which do not have a phonetic equivalent (For example Italy, who's direct word for the sport is "Calcio" but if you were to mention the word "Football" they would naturally assume Association Football).
You can probably add up the total as follows:
* countries where Football directly means Association Football
* countries where Football phonetically means Association Football
* countries where Football is assumed to mean Association Football
* countries where Football "is likely to" or most often means Association Football
against the
 
* countries where Football directly does not mean Association Football
against the
* few countries where the term Football has no established meaning at all (either official or unofficial)
Mickangel 12:03, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

text: 'Calcio' is the word most commonly used in Italian for 'soccer' but 'il footbal' does exist.GordyB 22:17, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

text: I didn't say that calcio did translate as "soccer" so what's your point exactly?GordyB 19:04, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: World wide

message: Say that in UK "Football" equals "soccer", but not what other forms of football are refered to as. - Matthew238 08:05, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: UK

message: I won't revert it again until we got this figured with some dialogue so we understand each other and make it less ambiguous. That last revert was to get attention to the talk page.
Okay, I slightly altered it so that the inference is clear that "most of NSW and QLD's population call it football" and that these two states are "the majority of Austraia's populations" and not the more ambiguous comment that said that may lead to the assumption that the most of NSW and QLD referred to, are the majority of Australia's population.
Is that fine with you? (Unsigned statement by User:60.225.219.33, August 3, 2006.)
:No, sorry. I'm not sure what the point of such a statement would be, other than to suggest that the majority of Australia's population follows rugby league, when we know that significant numbers of people in NSW and Qld follow rugby union, soccer and Aussie rules. Grant65 | Talk 05:54, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  majority comments 

message: Removed the following: Rugby football is always referred to as "rugby".
It means nothing as there is no sport called 'rugby football', there are two different sports called rugby union and rugby league. Even for those who rugby=rugby union don't say 'rugby football' as it is virtually archaic. Rugby is always called rugby makes a rather pointless sentence.
Could whoever wrote this please specify which code of rugby is meant by rugby football. I can only presume that it was union.GordyB 13:55, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was the one who added that part. Honestly, I didn't know that there were those two types, and I suspect sentiments are similar throughout the region. Anyway, this and this Wiki article suggest that it's rugby league. I suppose we don't have to add that back in, though...unless we say that, in the Caribbean, the word "football" is never used to refer to any form of rugby. Hairouna 18:08, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Rugby union is played in the Carribean.. I suspect that given the history of the Anglophone CArribean that rugby union would be more established (as like cricket it was popular with the British establishment). But I doubt that either sport is popular enough to need a mention.GordyB 19:41, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The Caribbean

message: Can someone substantiate this fact ??? This is a falacy which is often quoted by people from NSW and QLD who follow either rugby union or rugby league believing the reason their code is not supported is because it is mixed up with another inferior form of rugby.  I live in Melbourne.  I know the difference between Rugby League and Rugby Union.  Both The Age and The Herald Sun have different categories for the two sports.  Perth has had both a Rugby League and Rugby Union team, so I think they would know.  Though this is probably true of Tasmania and South Australia, they represent a small minority of the Australian population. What league and union fans don't understand that the sport is not popular for a reason, and it has nothing to do with the ability of people in most states to differentiate their two codes ...  --Biatch 08:10, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ms B, I wouldn't interpret that sentence as meaning that people in the so-called "AFL states" don't know the difference, but that they often refer to rugby league simply as "rugby". That is the case here in Perth, anyway. It would never happen in NSW or Qld (where "rugby" only means union and "football" means league). Perhaps it needs to be worded differently. Grant65 | Talk 13:09, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

text: I've reworded our section a little bit to better reflect reality. In my experience, Union is rarely (if ever) referred to as footy or football.--Jeff79 03:53, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Australian states no differentiation between the two kinds of rugby - Yea right

message: I have problems with this change:
* However the term 'soccer' is used by some, and understood by all.
to
* However the term "soccer" is used by some, and understood by all as a slang term for football in the same way that rugger is used for Rugby football.
Who says that "soccer" is any more of a slang term for association football than "football" is?  I think that changing this sentence in this way introduces a POV which needs a citation.
--Philip Baird Shearer 16:54, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: 'Rugger' is also not that common, only people who were privately educated are likely to say that. I've only heard it used in the phrase 'rugger bugger'. It might be slang but its use is extremely restricted.GordyB 13:52, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  UK and soccer 

message: This page perfectly highlights just why wikipedia is no more than just a collection of enthusiast fan pages where the mob rules as opposed to an encyclopaedia of facts - with the Australia section the worst of all.  
It’s staggering how many edits Aussie Rules contributors make to the Australian football pages and how desperate they are to work in the word ‘soccer’ while referencing AFL at every opportunity. 
I sometimes wonder if these contributors are public relations people employed the Aussie Rules Association.--202.47.51.130 12:43, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Lucinus, just give it up..GordyB13:48, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Is this the most corrupt comment on Wikipedia talk pages? ;-) matturn 12:54, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Nowhere close. Wahkeenah 13:17, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Most Corrupt Page on Wikipedia