Talk:Football/Archive 4

Pictures
I don't think the picture that has just been added is appropriate. It's too modern. Mintguy (T) 21:50, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You mean (from the history of the page) "19:30, 26 Aug 2004 Chmouel (The Football Association - add picture)". I agree Philip Baird Shearer 22:05, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Removed then - Chmouel 23:11, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

FIFA declared ancient Chinese football to be origin of modern football?
I've come across a claim by a Chinese editor that FIFA declared in 2004 that ancient Chinese football was the origin of modern football. I'm a bit skeptical and wonder if anyone has heard of this claim and whether there's any evidence to back it up? A-giau 19:02, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * Also see Talk:Football_%28soccer%29. A-giau 19:15, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Sounds like someone's playing politics whilst trying to promote the sport in Asia rather any kind of serious historical research. Mintguy (T)

Interesting links for wikifootyologists
The rl1908.com site has some interesting links at http://rl1908.com/Rugby-League-News/index.htm

"Football" (From the Pall Mall Gazette, Nov 14 1867)

[About the English public school games.]

http://rl1908.com/Rugby-League-News/Football.htm

"Rugby tradition based on a fable" Wednesday, 24 September 2003 The Canberra Times http://rl1908.com/Rugby-League-News/AFL-history.htm

"FOOTBALL IN SYDNEY BEFORE 1914" M. P. SHARP, Sporting Traditions Vol 4 No 1 Nov 1987 http://rl1908.com/Rugby-League-News/Sydney.htm

quote: "The SRFU's decision not to play intercolonial matches with Victoria prompted the supporters of the Australian game in Sydney to action. A meeting of the game's supporters at Woollahra in June 1880 was well-attended and, according to the Sydney Mail's football writer, 'Leather-stocking', a clear indication of the dis-satisfaction with rugby among Sydney footballers: It is pretty well understood... that there are scores of footballers ... who play the Rugby game under protest as it were, and who would gladly welcome a radical change in the present method of playing football. A week later over 100 footballers formed the New South Wales Football Association (NSWFA), to play under the VFA's [Australian] rules. The president of the new body was Philip Sheridan, the Irish born manager of the Association Cricket Ground.

The following month another group of footballers met to form an association to play under English Association rules, and, although soccer would not threaten either rugby or the Australian game (although it did in Newcastle [New South Wales]), the meeting is of interest here in that it reflects the antipathy of rugby supporters toward the Australian game. Senior rugby officials warmly welcomed the introduction of soccer which they believed would improve the skills of rugby players. Indeed, there was only one dissenter at the meeting, a committeeman with the NSWFA, F. Lyons. In a speech he declared that: as the colonies in many matters, political and social, had struck out a path for themselves, he did not see why the same line of conduct should not be adopted in the game of football. While averring that he had as much respect for British institutions as anyone else, Weiss claimed that people in New South Wales were 'quite as capable of judging the merits of the game as they were in England'."

[A great demonstration of the struggles over, and flux of, the word football, that in Sydney in 1880, it could mean three different games!]

Cheers, Grant65 (Talk) 12:03, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

Rutgers Vs. Princeton, 1869
(Copied from User_talk:Grant65)

I'm having a slight difference of opinion with ExplorerCDT about whether the Rutgers/Princeton game was American football, rugby, or soccer. He says it was nothing like soccer. I disagree, I say it's more like soccer than today's American football, but there also may have been elements of rugby in there. So I put down "football (or soccer) " in place of "football", and we got into a dispute about it (even though I'm a Rutgersman myself). Rickyrab 06:50, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps you should do some research, like I did long ago. Being a Rutgers student, you should know well enough where to find things in Alexander. Do you see any mentions of "soccer" as the inspiration for "football" on the Rutgers timeline (check the link on the RU article)? NO. Why? Because "soccer" had nothing to do with the founding of the game. If you read newspapers, histories of the event, all of them point to Rugby, and that the rules were altered from English Rugby rules. You will also see in those sources accounts of the game that to any simpleminded reader would say "Hey, this isn't soccer."

To Rickyrab (and for the edification of Grant65)...The Princeton/Rutgers rivalry in football died in 1980. They haven't met on the gridiron since. So you are DEAD WRONG in saying it "continues" in your edit on the Football article. ExplorerCDT 07:30, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * ExplorerCDT, I think I'm unbiased because I knew nothing about this particular match in 1869 until several months ago. Then I did a lot of research, on the web and in books, before writing the section on US/Canadian football. Nothing I've seen suggests they were playing a game like American football as we know it, or rugby either. For example, the feature which identifies rugby and US football as "cousins" is the players being allowed to hold the ball and run with, it as far as they like. Nothing I've seen says they were allowed to do that in that college game of 1869. Grant65 (Talk) 08:59, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

See also Talk:Rutgers University --Philip Baird Shearer 12:00, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The Rutgers Athletics official web site: page on the "First Intercollegiate Game" states
 * ''William J. Leggett, captain of the Rutgers team who later became a distinguished clergyman of the Dutch Reformed Church, suggested that rules for the contest be adopted from those of the London Football Association. Leggett's proposal was accepted by Captain William Gunmere of Princeton, who later became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New Jersey.

--Philip Baird Shearer 15:29, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

New Names of Sports
Has anyone (not at Wikipedia, but somewhere on earth) come up with a system of names to use to refer to sports to avoid regional differences?? For example:


 * NFL for football in the United States
 * CFL for football in Canada
 * AFL for football in Australia
 * SL for soccer in these countries and football in the United Kingdom

66.245.109.94 00:08, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Opinions wanted
Contributors to this page and interested readers, please help adjudicate the controvery at Talk:Rutgers_University. Thanks.Grant65 (Talk) 08:36, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

Historical football pictures
Someone asked for historical football pictures. I found this video from 1903 from the Library of Congress, here. Will this work? JesseW 23:30, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Its a big d/l if you dont have broadband, but I don't see a problem with listing it with the other links at the bottom.Grant65 (Talk) 05:00, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)
 * I was assuming it was wanted as still pictures for the article. I don't have the technical skill to pull out frames, but I hoped someone would.  I wasn't intending to list it in External links, but you're welcome to do so if you wish. JesseW 05:59, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Rugger and Soccer
I think a historical note on the origins of the words "rugger" and "soccer" would be useful in this article. Despite the contribution of the British punk band, Wat Tyler, soccer is a word that is used in Britain. At the moment the article reads as if soccer is an American English word, which it is not. When I was at school, one was invited to play a game of RUGger or SOCCer. This was probably because the emphasis is on the first syllable and so the second syllable could be mumbled -- something which teenagers tend to do, and this is harder to do with rugBEE and FootBall (hence another slang terms like "footer" and "footy" ).

Perhapse Charles Wreford-Brown deserves a mentioned even if only along the lines of William Webb Ellis. How accurate are these descriptions and how well known is the history of the word soccer?

http://worldsoccer.about.com/od/soccercoaching/l/bl_sochist.htm
 * Football or Soccer? - In the 1880's, Oxford University students used slang which involved adding an "er" to the end of words they had deliberately shortened. "Rugger," was slang for Rugby Football. A student, named Charles Wreford Brown, was asked if he liked to play rugger. 'No soccer!' Was his witty reply He had shortened asSOCiation (football) and added "er." The term was coined!

http://www.rsssf.com/rssbest/whysoccer.html
 * Near the end of 1863, Charles Wreford-Brown, who later became a notable official of the Football Association, was asked by some friends at Oxford whether he cared to join them for a game of "rugger" (rugby). He is said to have refused, preferring instead to go for a game of "soccer" - a play on the word "association". The name caught on. English public schoolboys love to nickname things, then as much as now.  The tendency is to add "er" to the end of many words.  Rugby [Union] Football became "rugby", and then "rugger".  Association Football was better know as "assoccer" and naturally evolved into "soccer" which is much easier for a schoolboy to say... Therefore, the word "soccer" has been used in the mother country of all football-type games since at least the mid-19th century.  The word "football", however, was more descriptive of the game (i.e. kicking a ball with the feet!) and was the term more frequently used.

--Philip Baird Shearer 15:42, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Name change
Considering that by and large, the world use of the term "football" isnt anywhere as disambiguous as this article presents, given that this article goes heavily into lesser used variants... Proposed: move Football  >>  Football history move Football (Soccer)  >>  Football The real reason is simple categorization. Category:Football is too much of a mess to be useful at this point, and most of the world does not use the term Soccer at all. -==SV 18:16, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I do not and will not support any such move. The point is not use of the word "soccer" but use of the word "football". For millions of English-speaking internet users, "football" does not mean association football/soccer. (See Football.) Attempts by soccer-philes to hijack the word are bitterly resented in those countries. The fact is there are several games with a historical right to the word. And another fact is that all of the modern games now called football have common origins. Hence this page. Secondly, much of the content actually did used to be on a page called "history of football" or something like that, which suffered from the same ambiguity. I don't see anything wrong with the category, except the misconception that it should only deal with soccer. Grant65 (Talk) 01:57, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguation note
The disambiguation note at the top of the article (whatever it is named) is there to help the casual reader who may be looking for another page. We cannot assume that reader is familiar with sports jargon or other specialized terminology. "Football codes" is not clear to the casual reader. I have attempted a couple of different ways to word that which I think would be more clear, but it is always reverted. There must be other wordings which, which while equally correct, avoid that jargon. Can other editors help suggest alternate phrasing? Jonathunder 22:56, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)


 * When we wish to speak of different sorts of duck we refer to different species. When we wish to speak of different methods of recording video information we refer to different formats and when we wish to speak of differently formulated sets of rules for playing the game of football we refer to different codes. The call for the word code to be replaced appears to be coming from a user from the insular looking United States, where one code of football greatly overwhelms all others. In other parts of the world where rival codes are more prominent the word is probably used more often, but it is not unknown in the USA and indeed our own Wikipedia article on Amercan football (which I have not edited) refers to "the rugby code". Code is simply the correct word to use. Jooler 00:49, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * "Codes" is technically correct and I think the reference in the first sentence to "sports around the world known as "Football" " is probably sufficient to clarify this.Grant65 (Talk) 00:52, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)


 * "Codes" may be technically correct, but it's jargon. It's probably fine for the body of the article where there is room to explain what is meant. But for the disambiguation note, we are helping casual readers know whether they are at the right article, without having to read several sentences or look for a definition. Obviously United States readers are not the only users of this page, but they are a significant number.
 * I've looked through pretty much the whole history of this article. For most of its history, the disambiguation text called them "types of football" or "kinds of football" games. Those terms are quite understandable. Jonathunder 01:22, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)
 * "United States readers are not the only users..." as are other nationalities, but we have to wade through references to "sidewalks, gas stations movie theaters, rutabaga, zucchinis, cilantro etc.. and figure out what is meant all on our own. As Grant has stated the context in which the word is used in that sentence is quite clear. "Code" is the correct word and it is no more "jargon" than "species" and "format" or "language" or a host of other words used to differentiate specific types of things from one another. Would you have us dumb down our articles and replace all those words with "type" or whatever? If this is what you are looking for then may I suggest you look at . Jooler 01:53, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * If "code" is the only "correct" word any you'll permit no other, why were "type" and "kind" acceptable for most of the article's history? I'm trying to find something for the opening that IS clear to unfamiliar reader. And I'd have no problem with equally clear words in the opening of the other articles you mentioned. In fact, the opening sentences should be accessable. Jonathunder 02:01, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)
 * While I agree that "code" is certainly not jargon, it is also simply not the correct word to use, since most people who play football and speak English would not refer to many of the variations listed as different "codes," some of them don't even have standardised rules. Changing it to say, "varieties of football" would not be "dumbing down," it would simply be in better faith. --Headisdead 14:08, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)