The rules of Association Football (soccer) were originally codified by a few clubs in England (1862?) who wanted a single set of rules, as several different teams played football using different sets of rules.

These clubs called themselves an association, became known as the Football Association (hence FA Cup, begining 1872), and the (modified) rules they outined are used today to play Association Football.

The rules of football within the association banned handling, catching etc of the ball, but some clubs preferred to continue to allow handling and so developed the rules for Rugby Football.

Rugby Football developed a schism between amateur and professional and the professionals broke away to form the Rugby League which is played a little differently than Rugby Union.

No such schism has ever occured wtih Association Football, the professional and amateur games and rules are identical.

American Football obviously is a variation of Rugby Football.

Other forms of football are Gaelic Football and Australian Rules Football, which is actually the clearest name. Technically it should be Association Rules Football or American Rules Football etc.

But it’s all a form of the original game called football which way back was just a mob (or two mobs) in the streets trying to propel a ball from one end to the other.

Soccer? Well we sometimes called it that as kids but I don’t think anyone in England uses the term now. And no one is going to call football Association Football or Association Rules Football anyway.

Im and Aussie and our organistaion changed its official name to Football 3 years ago..to use the formal name. As did New Zealand.

In South Africa they usually refer to Rugby as being Football…though the Football World Cup in 2010 held there so refer to the formal name also as well as Soccer.

The game Americans play is called Gridiron, the name they gave it is pretty much what everyone calls it. The pro league is nfl Gridiron.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_football

know you were probably just throwing that name out there, but he lived about two blocks away from me and he has played almost his whole life. My friend actually broke his leg in a match which is why he had a cast on for a whole season on tv. That example would have to be chalked up to the writers. However i do see your point, like in the movie “Goal” when the lead actor say “Full-ham” rather than Full-um”

MJ

The old fat white guys that have never played the sport run the show.