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Revision as of 00:06, 13 October 2005 by Grant65 (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Soccer, known in most countries simply as "football", is less popular in Australia than rival football codes. However support is growing.
The game was probably first played in Australia by English immigrants during the 1860s, following the formation of the Football Association in London in 1863, and the circulation of its rules, from that time onwards. However, the first recorded club was Wanderers, founded by a school teacher named John Walter Fletcher at Parramatta in 1880. The first game known to have occurred in Australia under FA rules took place the same year, when Wanderers played the Kings School rugby football team at Parramatta Common on August 14. However the oldest existing club is Balgownie Rangers, founded in 1883, which still competes in the Illawarra regional league.
The early governing bodies of soccer in Australia had to distinguish themselves from Australian Rules Football and rugby football, rival sports which had became very popular in the various Australian colonies during the 1860s and 1870s. The New South Wales (NSW) association was founded by Fletcher in 1882 as the English Football Association (later to become the Southern British Football Association); NSW and the neighbouring Colony of Victoria played each other for the first time in 1883. A Victorian association, the Anglo-Australian Football Association was founded in 1884; the Queensland British Football Association followed in 1889; the Western Australian British Football Association in 1896 (renamed the Western Australian Soccer Football Association in September 1925); the South Australian British Football Association in 1902; and a Tasmanian association in about 1910-1912. The first Australia-wide body was the Commonwealth Football Association, formed in 1912, although this folded two years later.
While native-born Australians overwhelmingly played and watched Australian Rules or Rugby, soccer was highly popular with the various British and Southern European immigrant communities, all of which expanded rapidly during the 1950s and 1960s: the English, Scottish, Greek, Italian, and Croatian communities gave rise to most of the largest clubs. At the time, soccer served as a bonding force within those ethnic communities, and as a point of identity amongst them and the wider Australian community. A similiarly increasing number of British migrants also retained an interest in soccer. Johnny Warren, who was a member of the national team at their first and only World Cup finals appearance, in 1974, entitled his memoir Sheilas, Wogs, and Poofters, giving an indication of how the wider Australian community viewed "wogball" in the 1970s.
The National Soccer League (NSL) was established in 1977 and was arguably the first truly national "football" competition in Australia. This league, along with Soccer Australia, was disbanded in 2004, and was replaced by the Football Federation Australia and the A-League. The first season of the new league began in August 2005.
The men's national soccer team is now usually known as the Socceroos although Football Australia have said that they will stop using this term and refer to the team as "Australia", while the women's national team is known as the Matildas.