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I agree with some of the above comments, but would like to make a few points:
1. A "league" can be a generic word meaning an organisation, as in the Temperance League, the Anti-Nazi League or the Canadian Football League, rather than necessarily being a competition. The fact that there was no Premier League prior to 1992, does not mean that that there was no "league" in the generic sense.
2. Re. the game "not banned" in Ireland: I take your point, but the original par speculated that it was a Norman game, which cannot be said with any certainty either.
3. Being very familiar with both Aussie Rules and soccer, I can say out of the 10 substantive Sheffield Rules, only four are at all similar to present day soccer, whereas six are identical or partly similiar to Aussie Rules (not counting the one about caps, although they were worn by Aussie Rules in the early years :-). Of course it doesn't prove a direct link between Sheffield and Aussie Rules, but that's not what I said in the text.
4. The fullpointsfooty.net site is an excellent, if still-developing source, in regard to the later history of Aussie Rules, and it's true that the game between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar is a historical red herring. However, Geoffrey Blainey's (1990) A Game of our Own: The Origins of Australian Football (Information Australia, Melbourne) is regarded as fairly authoritative. I don't have a copy with me at the moment but Blainey describes a trial game played by Tom Wills and friends at the "Richmond Paddock" in Melbourne on July 31, 1858. There had to be provisional rules for that to occur. Wills (1836-72) had been educated at Rugby and had played cricket for Cambridge, so he would have been familiar with many varieties of football played in England in the early 1850s. H.C.A. Harrison was Wills's cousin, they were close in 1858, and they were named in 1906 as official "fathers of the game", but that does appear to have been generous to Harrison. I will do some more digging on him.
PS: What exactly are the advantages of creating a user account?
With an account you get access to certain features that anonymous users don't see Wikipedia:Why create an account?. Mintguy (T) 20:06, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I'm aware of the MCG site -- it's sketchy at best, and overall I don't think it's as factually reliable as it should be. You may interested to know that Blainey also decries the influence of Gaelic (and Marn Grook) on Aussie Rules. However (a big however), the similarities are as plain as the nose on your face, as demonstrated by the "International Rules" compromise -- a compromise between either of these games and either rugby or soccer would be impossible. If you represent the history as a dichotomy between "kicking" v. "handling" then the above games appear as nothing more than compromises between the two tendencies. However, what contrasts them to the other games more than anything is the total absence of an offside rule; a huge difference. And I'm not aware of anyone explicitly suggesting the opposite: i.e. that the 1884 Gaelic rules came from nowhere, or were influenced by Aussie Rules, Sheffield rules or one of their public school predecessors! Thats would be unlikely, considering the political implications. To me it is far more logical that localised Irish games influenced one or more of the English public school games. (Since the Irish peasantry would not have been as well-travelled as English schoolmasters.) Of course there is probably no way of proving this.
People like simple solutions to historical questions: "A led to B", but few questions can be answered so simply. Some can't be answered at all. Grant65 (T) March 10, 2004.
Firstly please create an account. Mintguy (T) 10:40, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I think by "handling" we mean running whilst carrying the ball. As I understand it you can't do this in Aussie rules.
You should note that the original 1863 FA rules still included the concept of "a fair catch" and a "mark" - 8. If a player makes a fair catch, he shall be entitled to a free kick, providing he claims it by making a mark with his heel at once; and in order to take such a kick he may go back as far as he pleases, and no player on the opposite side shall advance beyond his mark until he has kicked.
I take your point about offside. I had not recognised the significant fact that both Aussie and Gaelic football lack offside rules. The drafting and interpretation of the offside law has always caused problems. The Cambridge off-side rule of 1848, required three players in front of goal. It is significant that the original FA rules of 1863 stipulated only one. When a player has kicked the ball, any one of the same side who is nearer to the opponents' goal line is out of play and may not touch the ball himself nor in any way whatever prevent any other player from doing so until the ball has been played, but no player is out of play when the ball is kicked from behind the goal line. By 1866 the FA had reverted to the Cambridge rule of three players (it remained as such until 1925). The 1857 rules were only adhered to by Sheffield, and apparently the lack of an offside rule was only a temporary state of affairs. According to The History of the Football Association (1951) an 1866 game between Sheffield and an FA side from London caused problems because the FA wanted to use the three players rule whilst the Sheffield side were using the one player rule. In the end they played two legs with different rules in each game. The published rules of Sheffield FC from 1870 (in the appendix of the above book) show a rule specifically labelled "offside". So it appears that the Sheffield 1857 rules (lacking offside) were soon abandoned. Thus the lack of offside in the Sheffield rules is a bit of an anomaly. The club was formed by players from Harrow and Harrow had an offside rule. By 1878 they agreed to not use their own rules anymore and stick with the FA rules. But offside was still causing problems in thr mid 1880s when England played Scotland.
For sure, now it would be difficult to imagine a compromise set of rules between the association game and rugby, despite the common ancestry, and the similarlity between Aussie rules and Gaelic football is striking. But I just cannot see that there is a real connection. There are so many similarities (right up to the specific wording of the rules) between the first Aussie rules and the early rules devised in England (even the first FA rules include taking a"mark"), that there can be little doubt that the public school rules were the major and perhaps exclusive influence. Is the similarly between Gaelic and Aussie footbal simply a case of parrallel evolution. I wonder if the English game had developed without offside would that too have evolved along the same lines as those two games.
So the question is, why did Wills et al not have offside in their game? He was from Rugby and Cambridge and would have been exposed the offsde rule. Are you suggesting that the Irish in Australia influenced Wills, so that he didn't include offside? I might suggest that since offside is such a contentious and difficult rule to interpret he thought it better to leave it out. As for the Irish game, the "folk game" had all but disappeard by the time the GAA drew up their rules (much like the "mob" football in England). Their intention was to create a game different to the "foreign" (read English) games of rugby and association football, what better way to do this than to avoid the offside rule. You dismiss Gaelic football's connection to the early English games, but Michael Cusack (founder of the GAA) played rugby before becomming disillusioned with the protestant domination of the 'English' games. Mintguy (T) 10:40, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
GAA rules of 1887
Hmm, I have created an account and as far as I know I was logged in last time I edited, so I'm not sure what else you want me to do, or why(?)
The short answer to your questions is that I don't know, and I don't think anyone does. The offside thing could be parallel evolution, but there are too many other similarities between Gaelic and Aussie Rules. Watch one of each and you will see what I mean. Both of them allow handling/running with the ball under certain conditions (bouncing and/or kicking it to oneself). One of the main differences between the two is the absence of tackling in Gaelic (which causes problems in the International Rules games), but Gaelic did allow tackling in its early years. Cusack may have been disillusioned with rugby, but where did he get such a radically different game from, if not from traditional Irish games? That was what the Gaelic Athletic Association was all about.
There were very large numbers of Irishmen in Victoria in the 1850s, following the Famine of 1847-51 and the Australian goldrushes (see Australia#Demographics) from 1851. Wills may have seen them playing their own varieties of football. But, as I said above: "To me it is far more logical that localised Irish games influenced one or more of the English public school games. (Since the Irish peasantry would not have been as well-travelled as English schoolmasters at least before 1847.) Of course there is probably no way of proving this." That is, the relationship may have occurred indirectly, by way of now-forgotten public school games, based on Irish versions of "football". I think the anomalies of the Sheffield rules support this idea to an extent. But I don't know. Grant65 (T) March 11, 2004
I've never doubted that there were plenty of Irish in Australia at the time. But because the "traditional" game had virtually died out by Cussack's time, I sorely doubt that they were all ardent football enthusiasts, over and above their English contempories. Football on the public roadways had been suppressed in Britian by the Highways act and this would have affected Ireland too. It seems to me bizarre to suggest the the GAA rules were in anyway a model of the "folk games" played in Ireland, any more than the public school rules were were a model of the traditional mob games in England. I suspect the English mob football and the Irish folk games were indistinguishable. Aside from this the rules of this time are so flimsy as to be open to a great deal of interpretation, the GAA rules in particular seem to have very little to say about the actual play. Mintguy (T) 16:27, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
There is no offside rule in hurling either. And although their rules were not officially codified until 1870, it is a very old game and this adds some weight to the idea that it was an Irish tradition to have players from both teams roaming freely on a playing field. Especially as there are offside rules in the related sports of ice hockey and shinty (which is also very old).
I don't see why it's a "bizarre idea" that individual Irish villages couldn't come up with their own local rules. And if traditional Irish football games had "virtually died out" by 1884, it's still not the same thing as actually dying out.
Also, I wouldn't like to assume that all of the English medieval games were "mob games" and/or had no rules to speak of. Just because there were no written rules, or few written rules it doesn't means that there weren't any unofficial rules, accepted practices/standards of play, something which still happens in many sports today.
Anyway, I'll go to the library in the next few days and have a look at some histories of Aussies Rules and Gaelic to see if there is more light to be shed on this. Grant65 14:50, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Generally the only rule in mob football was that you had to get the ball to some marker by any means possible. The number of players were unlimited. This is certainly how the games that remain and are still played on Shrove Tuesday are played. Engravings from the period certainly suggest that this was the case. You have to remember that we are talking about the early 19th century. Generally working class people had to work six days a week often for 12 hours a day and had neither the time nor the inclination to involve themselves in sport as we know it. This is why the mob games of England were generally played on special days like Shrove Tuesday. It wasn't until the Factories Act of 1850 the people were given a half-day holiday on saturday afternoons. This is why football games in Britain, generally start at 3pm on a saturday afternoon. The only place where people had the leisure time or inclination to "create" and play modern type games with strict rules were in the priviledged schools. The English public schools were the breeding grounds for these games. If some form of game with strict rules developed amongst the peasantry in Ireland it would be unique in the world. Mintguy (T) 19:00, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Grant, please see the comment on your talk page. Mintguy (T) 14:44, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Grant, I like you recent edits BTW, these are things I meant to get around to, but like everything else I didn't. As you've added about Rugby League's formation coming as a result of the pressure of professionalism, and the RFU rejecting professionalism, it might be worth mentioning how the FA embraced professionalism (at first relucatantly) making the game what it is today, but I'm not sure where best to put this. Mintguy (T) 13:20, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
BTW just found this in the History of the FA book.
1924: Challenge Cup presented by The FA to The Australian Football Association. The Following letter was received by the FA:
To The Secretary, The Football Association Dear Sir,
I beg to acknowledge receipt of your communication in which you convey the information that you Council has generously donated to Australia a challenge Cup for Competition on Inter-State lines. I am directed by my Executive to convey to your Association the best thanks of the Football community of Australia.
Yours failthfully E.S. LUKEMAN Secretary Australian F.A.
Interesting. I guess the FA perceived that they had "lost the war" in Australia by the 1880s. Grant65 (Talk) 04:33, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)
This article is a little bit bogus in that it's a good academic treatment of all these kinds of football, but to most people today, "football" means one of two things, American football (in the US) or Soccer (elsewhere). Those games have good articles of their own and that terminology should be briefly explained and those articles should be linked in the very first paragraph of the "football" article.
Shouldn't this just link to diffrent countries versions of football? Rather than trying to explain all versions of it on one page (as it is kind of confusing)
I think though we do need a mention of later developments in American football, such as the introduction of the forward pass (c.1905?).
There should also be a separate par (at least) on Rugby League, which is a significant code (played professionally in at least three countries) and has become a quite different game to Rugby Union (In fact RL has borrowed from the US game.) But I lack the in-depth knowledge to do this right now. Grant65 (Talk) 04:05, Mar 23, 2004 (UTC)
I discovered that Thomas Croke, one of the founders of the GAA, was Archbishop of Auckland in the early 1870s, a time when Aussie Rules (or "Victorian Rules" as it then was) was at least as popular in New Zealand as rugby or soccer. [2] This adds a little weight to the idea that Aussie Rules had a significant influence on the development of Gaelic football.
PS I added sub-headings because the page is getting somewhat unwieldy. How do we break this up into editable sections? Grant65 (Talk) 04:28, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)
Ah, I see it's been done automatically. Grant65 (Talk) 04:38, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)
There is an error in the transliteration of the Greek word "αρπαστον" in the Ancient Games sub-heading. It's given as "episkyros", but the actual transliteration of that sequence of Greek characters is "arpaston". "episkyros" would be "επισκυρος". I don't know whether the Greek should change or the transliteration. Deadlock (Talk) 16:43, Jul 08, 2004 (UTC)
Hi. It's been a very long time since I wrote that part of the article and I can't remember what the orignal source was. Searching on google for "αρπαστον" brings up a site which has a mirror of the Village pump when I asked a question about those sequence of letters. My question was "Anyone speak Greek? I need to know for a wiki article if 'αρπαστον' would equate to 'pheninda'?" - The respoonse I got said. "I think I've found that it equates to 'episkyros', but could 'pheninda' be a Romanisation of this? " Looking in my EB11 it talks about "επισκυρος". So I'm sure this is correct. It also mentions that the Roman Harpastum is derived from the greek verb "αρπαζω" (I seize), so I think i muddled these two up. Thanks for your help. Mintguy (T) 17:55, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)
You're welcome. For the record a direct transliteration of 'pheninda' would be 'φενινδα'. Deadlock 17:30, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I would like to bring this article up to featured status. To help with this I think we really need some decent pictures. Has anybody got any opinions on what kind of pictures would be good? Mintguy (T) 14:27, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
I agree with some of the above comments, but would like to make a few points:
1. A "league" can be a generic word meaning an organisation, as in the Temperance League, the Anti-Nazi League or the Canadian Football League, rather than necessarily being a competition. The fact that there was no Premier League prior to 1992, does not mean that that there was no "league" in the generic sense.
2. Re. the game "not banned" in Ireland: I take your point, but the original par speculated that it was a Norman game, which cannot be said with any certainty either.
3. Being very familiar with both Aussie Rules and soccer, I can say out of the 10 substantive Sheffield Rules, only four are at all similar to present day soccer, whereas six are identical or partly similiar to Aussie Rules (not counting the one about caps, although they were worn by Aussie Rules in the early years :-). Of course it doesn't prove a direct link between Sheffield and Aussie Rules, but that's not what I said in the text.
4. The fullpointsfooty.net site is an excellent, if still-developing source, in regard to the later history of Aussie Rules, and it's true that the game between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar is a historical red herring. However, Geoffrey Blainey's (1990) A Game of our Own: The Origins of Australian Football (Information Australia, Melbourne) is regarded as fairly authoritative. I don't have a copy with me at the moment but Blainey describes a trial game played by Tom Wills and friends at the "Richmond Paddock" in Melbourne on July 31, 1858. There had to be provisional rules for that to occur. Wills (1836-72) had been educated at Rugby and had played cricket for Cambridge, so he would have been familiar with many varieties of football played in England in the early 1850s. H.C.A. Harrison was Wills's cousin, they were close in 1858, and they were named in 1906 as official "fathers of the game", but that does appear to have been generous to Harrison. I will do some more digging on him.
PS: What exactly are the advantages of creating a user account?
With an account you get access to certain features that anonymous users don't see Wikipedia:Why create an account?. Mintguy (T) 20:06, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I'm aware of the MCG site -- it's sketchy at best, and overall I don't think it's as factually reliable as it should be. You may interested to know that Blainey also decries the influence of Gaelic (and Marn Grook) on Aussie Rules. However (a big however), the similarities are as plain as the nose on your face, as demonstrated by the "International Rules" compromise -- a compromise between either of these games and either rugby or soccer would be impossible. If you represent the history as a dichotomy between "kicking" v. "handling" then the above games appear as nothing more than compromises between the two tendencies. However, what contrasts them to the other games more than anything is the total absence of an offside rule; a huge difference. And I'm not aware of anyone explicitly suggesting the opposite: i.e. that the 1884 Gaelic rules came from nowhere, or were influenced by Aussie Rules, Sheffield rules or one of their public school predecessors! Thats would be unlikely, considering the political implications. To me it is far more logical that localised Irish games influenced one or more of the English public school games. (Since the Irish peasantry would not have been as well-travelled as English schoolmasters.) Of course there is probably no way of proving this.
People like simple solutions to historical questions: "A led to B", but few questions can be answered so simply. Some can't be answered at all. Grant65 (T) March 10, 2004.
Firstly please create an account. Mintguy (T) 10:40, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I think by "handling" we mean running whilst carrying the ball. As I understand it you can't do this in Aussie rules.
You should note that the original 1863 FA rules still included the concept of "a fair catch" and a "mark" - 8. If a player makes a fair catch, he shall be entitled to a free kick, providing he claims it by making a mark with his heel at once; and in order to take such a kick he may go back as far as he pleases, and no player on the opposite side shall advance beyond his mark until he has kicked.
I take your point about offside. I had not recognised the significant fact that both Aussie and Gaelic football lack offside rules. The drafting and interpretation of the offside law has always caused problems. The Cambridge off-side rule of 1848, required three players in front of goal. It is significant that the original FA rules of 1863 stipulated only one. When a player has kicked the ball, any one of the same side who is nearer to the opponents' goal line is out of play and may not touch the ball himself nor in any way whatever prevent any other player from doing so until the ball has been played, but no player is out of play when the ball is kicked from behind the goal line. By 1866 the FA had reverted to the Cambridge rule of three players (it remained as such until 1925). The 1857 rules were only adhered to by Sheffield, and apparently the lack of an offside rule was only a temporary state of affairs. According to The History of the Football Association (1951) an 1866 game between Sheffield and an FA side from London caused problems because the FA wanted to use the three players rule whilst the Sheffield side were using the one player rule. In the end they played two legs with different rules in each game. The published rules of Sheffield FC from 1870 (in the appendix of the above book) show a rule specifically labelled "offside". So it appears that the Sheffield 1857 rules (lacking offside) were soon abandoned. Thus the lack of offside in the Sheffield rules is a bit of an anomaly. The club was formed by players from Harrow and Harrow had an offside rule. By 1878 they agreed to not use their own rules anymore and stick with the FA rules. But offside was still causing problems in thr mid 1880s when England played Scotland.
For sure, now it would be difficult to imagine a compromise set of rules between the association game and rugby, despite the common ancestry, and the similarlity between Aussie rules and Gaelic football is striking. But I just cannot see that there is a real connection. There are so many similarities (right up to the specific wording of the rules) between the first Aussie rules and the early rules devised in England (even the first FA rules include taking a"mark"), that there can be little doubt that the public school rules were the major and perhaps exclusive influence. Is the similarly between Gaelic and Aussie footbal simply a case of parrallel evolution. I wonder if the English game had developed without offside would that too have evolved along the same lines as those two games.
So the question is, why did Wills et al not have offside in their game? He was from Rugby and Cambridge and would have been exposed the offsde rule. Are you suggesting that the Irish in Australia influenced Wills, so that he didn't include offside? I might suggest that since offside is such a contentious and difficult rule to interpret he thought it better to leave it out. As for the Irish game, the "folk game" had all but disappeard by the time the GAA drew up their rules (much like the "mob" football in England). Their intention was to create a game different to the "foreign" (read English) games of rugby and association football, what better way to do this than to avoid the offside rule. You dismiss Gaelic football's connection to the early English games, but Michael Cusack (founder of the GAA) played rugby before becomming disillusioned with the protestant domination of the 'English' games. Mintguy (T) 10:40, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
GAA rules of 1887
Hmm, I have created an account and as far as I know I was logged in last time I edited, so I'm not sure what else you want me to do, or why(?)
The short answer to your questions is that I don't know, and I don't think anyone does. The offside thing could be parallel evolution, but there are too many other similarities between Gaelic and Aussie Rules. Watch one of each and you will see what I mean. Both of them allow handling/running with the ball under certain conditions (bouncing and/or kicking it to oneself). One of the main differences between the two is the absence of tackling in Gaelic (which causes problems in the International Rules games), but Gaelic did allow tackling in its early years. Cusack may have been disillusioned with rugby, but where did he get such a radically different game from, if not from traditional Irish games? That was what the Gaelic Athletic Association was all about.
There were very large numbers of Irishmen in Victoria in the 1850s, following the Famine of 1847-51 and the Australian goldrushes (see Australia#Demographics) from 1851. Wills may have seen them playing their own varieties of football. But, as I said above: "To me it is far more logical that localised Irish games influenced one or more of the English public school games. (Since the Irish peasantry would not have been as well-travelled as English schoolmasters at least before 1847.) Of course there is probably no way of proving this." That is, the relationship may have occurred indirectly, by way of now-forgotten public school games, based on Irish versions of "football". I think the anomalies of the Sheffield rules support this idea to an extent. But I don't know. Grant65 (T) March 11, 2004
I've never doubted that there were plenty of Irish in Australia at the time. But because the "traditional" game had virtually died out by Cussack's time, I sorely doubt that they were all ardent football enthusiasts, over and above their English contempories. Football on the public roadways had been suppressed in Britian by the Highways act and this would have affected Ireland too. It seems to me bizarre to suggest the the GAA rules were in anyway a model of the "folk games" played in Ireland, any more than the public school rules were were a model of the traditional mob games in England. I suspect the English mob football and the Irish folk games were indistinguishable. Aside from this the rules of this time are so flimsy as to be open to a great deal of interpretation, the GAA rules in particular seem to have very little to say about the actual play. Mintguy (T) 16:27, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
There is no offside rule in hurling either. And although their rules were not officially codified until 1870, it is a very old game and this adds some weight to the idea that it was an Irish tradition to have players from both teams roaming freely on a playing field. Especially as there are offside rules in the related sports of ice hockey and shinty (which is also very old).
I don't see why it's a "bizarre idea" that individual Irish villages couldn't come up with their own local rules. And if traditional Irish football games had "virtually died out" by 1884, it's still not the same thing as actually dying out.
Also, I wouldn't like to assume that all of the English medieval games were "mob games" and/or had no rules to speak of. Just because there were no written rules, or few written rules it doesn't means that there weren't any unofficial rules, accepted practices/standards of play, something which still happens in many sports today.
Anyway, I'll go to the library in the next few days and have a look at some histories of Aussies Rules and Gaelic to see if there is more light to be shed on this. Grant65 14:50, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Generally the only rule in mob football was that you had to get the ball to some marker by any means possible. The number of players were unlimited. This is certainly how the games that remain and are still played on Shrove Tuesday are played. Engravings from the period certainly suggest that this was the case. You have to remember that we are talking about the early 19th century. Generally working class people had to work six days a week often for 12 hours a day and had neither the time nor the inclination to involve themselves in sport as we know it. This is why the mob games of England were generally played on special days like Shrove Tuesday. It wasn't until the Factories Act of 1850 the people were given a half-day holiday on saturday afternoons. This is why football games in Britain, generally start at 3pm on a saturday afternoon. The only place where people had the leisure time or inclination to "create" and play modern type games with strict rules were in the priviledged schools. The English public schools were the breeding grounds for these games. If some form of game with strict rules developed amongst the peasantry in Ireland it would be unique in the world. Mintguy (T) 19:00, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Grant, please see the comment on your talk page. Mintguy (T) 14:44, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Grant, I like you recent edits BTW, these are things I meant to get around to, but like everything else I didn't. As you've added about Rugby League's formation coming as a result of the pressure of professionalism, and the RFU rejecting professionalism, it might be worth mentioning how the FA embraced professionalism (at first relucatantly) making the game what it is today, but I'm not sure where best to put this. Mintguy (T) 13:20, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
BTW just found this in the History of the FA book.
1924: Challenge Cup presented by The FA to The Australian Football Association. The Following letter was received by the FA:
To The Secretary, The Football Association Dear Sir,
I beg to acknowledge receipt of your communication in which you convey the information that you Council has generously donated to Australia a challenge Cup for Competition on Inter-State lines. I am directed by my Executive to convey to your Association the best thanks of the Football community of Australia.
Yours failthfully E.S. LUKEMAN Secretary Australian F.A.
Interesting. I guess the FA perceived that they had "lost the war" in Australia by the 1880s. Grant65 (Talk) 04:33, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)
This article is a little bit bogus in that it's a good academic treatment of all these kinds of football, but to most people today, "football" means one of two things, American football (in the US) or Soccer (elsewhere). Those games have good articles of their own and that terminology should be briefly explained and those articles should be linked in the very first paragraph of the "football" article.
Shouldn't this just link to diffrent countries versions of football? Rather than trying to explain all versions of it on one page (as it is kind of confusing)
I think though we do need a mention of later developments in American football, such as the introduction of the forward pass (c.1905?).
There should also be a separate par (at least) on Rugby League, which is a significant code (played professionally in at least three countries) and has become a quite different game to Rugby Union (In fact RL has borrowed from the US game.) But I lack the in-depth knowledge to do this right now. Grant65 (Talk) 04:05, Mar 23, 2004 (UTC)
I discovered that Thomas Croke, one of the founders of the GAA, was Archbishop of Auckland in the early 1870s, a time when Aussie Rules (or "Victorian Rules" as it then was) was at least as popular in New Zealand as rugby or soccer. [2] This adds a little weight to the idea that Aussie Rules had a significant influence on the development of Gaelic football.
PS I added sub-headings because the page is getting somewhat unwieldy. How do we break this up into editable sections? Grant65 (Talk) 04:28, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)
Ah, I see it's been done automatically. Grant65 (Talk) 04:38, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)
There is an error in the transliteration of the Greek word "αρπαστον" in the Ancient Games sub-heading. It's given as "episkyros", but the actual transliteration of that sequence of Greek characters is "arpaston". "episkyros" would be "επισκυρος". I don't know whether the Greek should change or the transliteration. Deadlock (Talk) 16:43, Jul 08, 2004 (UTC)
Hi. It's been a very long time since I wrote that part of the article and I can't remember what the orignal source was. Searching on google for "αρπαστον" brings up a site which has a mirror of the Village pump when I asked a question about those sequence of letters. My question was "Anyone speak Greek? I need to know for a wiki article if 'αρπαστον' would equate to 'pheninda'?" - The respoonse I got said. "I think I've found that it equates to 'episkyros', but could 'pheninda' be a Romanisation of this? " Looking in my EB11 it talks about "επισκυρος". So I'm sure this is correct. It also mentions that the Roman Harpastum is derived from the greek verb "αρπαζω" (I seize), so I think i muddled these two up. Thanks for your help. Mintguy (T) 17:55, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)
You're welcome. For the record a direct transliteration of 'pheninda' would be 'φενινδα'. Deadlock 17:30, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I would like to bring this article up to featured status. To help with this I think we really need some decent pictures. Has anybody got any opinions on what kind of pictures would be good? Mintguy (T) 14:27, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)