The reformed Soccer Australia group has decided to call itself "Football Australia", and will market itself aggressively as the "Football" game to follow in Australia. Its new A League starts in October 2005. (Summer time down under) Note -There are currently approx 200 professional Australian soccer players in Europe We all know the Governing body of A/Rules is called the Australian Football League. The AFL executive is adopting a wait and see attitude. The 2 Rugby codes in Australia use the word Rugby in their titles. Would there be any effect if the same thing happened in the US. Any other opinions on this. Should the AFL have a serious look at its title.
I hope it doesn't matter. I wish they were all used with full qualifications every time, e.g. Association Football, Rugby Union Football, Australian Football, Gaelic Football, Rugby League Football, etc. I really wish the full qualification for Association Football was used in North America. But it gets too wordy, and depending on the context either the word Football is dropped completely, or only the word Football is retained. It's all football to me (except the American/Canadian kinds, and League). But again, what do I know? I live in California and support the Indian cricket team.
Yes, the thing is everybody calls their respective games -Football - In the A/Rules community it is also known as Footy. Soccer football is going to have to work hard to make inroads into our sport I think. This site lists the crowd attendances world wide for all football codes. Aussie Rules (The AFL) comes in fourth. The AFL figures will go up when the Melbourne Cricket Ground capacity goes back to 100,000 in 2006. It has been running at about a redevelopment 75,000 for the last 2 years. Go to http://www.geocities.com/worldfootballrankings2004/Top125Leagues.html Chandu, The BBC said there was a crowd of about 100,000 yesterday in Calcutta for the historic India-Pakistan game.
Even if Les is a Eurosnob. On topic, I can't see much of a conflict here. At present, the Aussie Rules code and the AFL name has so much of a brand identity in this country, that there should be no confusion. Besides, the party of the second part is the organisation formerly known as Soccer Australia, a body known for taking the act of ineptitude to a new art form. So much so, that they chose the name of "the A-League" to name the new top-flight soccer league here, unaware that the name was already taken as the name of the Division 2 setup in the USA. With blunders like that, AFL fans should not be afraid (unfortunately, because I'd like to see both the Aussie F.A. and the new league do well here).