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Revision as of 15:50, 24 December 2005 by 71.250.120.228 (talk)(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: for example, in November 2005, a national television audience of 2.4 million people watched the match in which the Australian team qualified for the
, including 924,000 in Sydney and 797,000 in Melbourne. By comparison, the 2005 Australian rules football Grand Final was watched by 3.3 million, including 1.2 million in Melbourne and 991,000 in Sydney ; the National Rugby League Grand Final was watched by 2.5 million, including 1.1 million in Sydney and 506,000 in Melbourne.
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 the sport 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, the game 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, the game 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 the sport. Johnny Warren, who was a member of the national team at their first World Cup 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 A-League and by Football Federation Australia respectively. The first season of the new league began in August 2005.
The men's national team is nicknamed 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.
On November 16, 2005, the Socceroos defeated Uruguay 4-2 in a penalty shootout to secure a place in the
, the first time Australia has been in the World cup since 1974. Although falling short of declaring a 'national day off', Prime Minister John Howard asked employers to turn a blind eye to workers turing up late for work the following day, highlighting the hysteria of the match.