by rain » Mon Jun 19, 2006 11:19 pm
this is an unedited, first draft essay by a 17 year old melbournian. used with permission. oh. ok. I had to twist her arm a bit.<br>****<br>Ah, the footy season! It's never seen coming and never seen going, mainly because the few mebournians who maintain some semblance of sanity determinedly turn a blind eye at the sight of it while the rest of the footy-neurotic rabble are too busy jumping up and down about it to pay much attention to the finer details. What is it about football that has the ability to affect the masses in this way? As the australian rules football season comes back around again disputes are seen to break out nearly everywhere. Years ago before football was such an enormous money spinning industry, viewed nationwide, terms and language which can be heard to pour forth from nearly any "decent" supporter's mouth would've been saved for the like of church or politics. These days the main focus of your average citizens passion, is football. <br>Is this a worldwide conspiracy to prevent people thinking? While our common sense tells us all that football is only a game vast amounts of time, energy and money are spent presenting this spectacle to the masses. Many people that would otherwise be accepted as normal individuals are seen spending money to see two groups of grown men try to kick a ball from one end of a stadium to another! Now we realise why gladiator fights were so popular in ancient rome compared to this form of entertainment it must've been thrilling. However lets not go too easy on the society that surely played a part in the genetics that allow your average human to switch off at the sight of conflict and transform into a maniac screaming threats at the team they claim to be supporting. It is simply a case of having a better place for it than at the footy stadium at the time. Although, the Roman writer Cicero writes of one case in which a man was killed whilst having a shave when a ball was kicked into the barbers shop.<br>Perhaps the fact that kicking at objects with our feet seems to have been bred into us now contributes the the way peoples' passion for it has grown. Although the earliest forms of football are not known the first known reference to football in England was given by Willian FitzStephen :<br>After lunch all the youth of the city go out into the fields to take part in a ball game. The students of each school have their own ball; the workers from each city craft are also carrying their balls. Older citizens, fathers, and wealthy citizens come on horseback to watch their juniors competing, and to relive their own youth vicariously: you can see their inner passions aroused as they watch the action and get caught up in the fun being had by the carefree adolescents.<br> <br>Throughout the history of mankind the urge to kick at stones and other such objects is thought to have led to many early activities involving kicking and/or running with a ball. Football-like games predate recorded history in all parts of the world, though the earliest forms of football are not known.<br><br>There are a number of less well-documented references to prehistoric ancient or traditional ball games, played by indigenous peoples all around the world. For example, William Strachey of the Jamestown settlement is the first to record a game played by the Native Americans called Pahsaheman.Iin 1610 In Victoria, Australia Indigenous Australians played a game called Marn Grook An 1878 book by Robert Brough-Smyth The Aborigines of Victoria, quotes a man called Richard Thomas as saying, in about 1841 that he had witnessed Aboriginal people playing the game: "Mr Thomas describes how the foremost player will drop kick a ball made from the skin of a possum and how other players leap into the air in order to catch it." It is widely believed that Marn Grook had an influence on the development of Australian Rules Football <br><br>The first description of football in England was given by William FitzStephen (c. 1174-1183). He described the activities of London youths during the annual festival of Shrove Tuesday <br>After lunch all the youth of the city go out into the fields to take part in a ball game. The students of each school have their own ball; the workers from each city craft are also carrying their balls. Older citizens, fathers, and wealthy citizens come on horseback to watch their juniors competing, and to relive their own youth vicariously: you can see their inner passions aroused as they watch the action and get caught up in the fun being had by the carefree adolescents.<br><br>By 1608 , the local authorities in Manchester were complaining that:<br>With the ffotebale...[there] hath beene greate disorder in our towne of Manchester we are told, and glasse windowes broken yearlye and spoyled by a companie of lewd and disordered persons using that unlawful exercise of playing with the ffotebale in ye streets of the said towne, breaking many men's windows and glasse at their pleasure and other great inormyties<br>That same year, the modern spelling of the word "football" is first recorded, when it was used disapprovingly by William Shakespeare Shakespeare's play King Lear (which was first published in 160<!--EZCODE EMOTICON START 8) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/glasses.gif ALT="8)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> contains the line: "Nor tripped neither, you base football player" (Act I Scene 4). Shakespeare also mentions the game in A Comedy of Errors (Act II Scene 1):<br>Am I so round with you as you with me,<br>That like a football you do spurn me thus?<br>You spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither:<br>If I last in this service, you must case me in leather. <br>("Spurn" literally means to kick away, thus implying that the game involved kicking a ball between players.)<br><br>Football had come to be adopted by a number of public schools as a way of encouraging competitiveness and keeping youths fit. Each school drafted their own rules to suit the dimensions of their playing field. The rules varied widely between different schools and were changed over time with each new intake of pupils. Soon, two schools of thought about how football should be played emerged. Some schools favoured a game in which the ball could be carried (as at Rugby, Marlborough <and Cheltenham ), whilst others preferred a game where kicking and dribbling the ball was promoted (as at Eton, Harrow , Westminster and Charterhouse. The division into these two camps was partly the result of circumstances in which the games were played. At Charterhouse and Westminster the boys were confined to playing their ball game within the cloisters making the rough and tumble of the handling game difficult.<br><br>Tom Wills began to develop Australian rules football in Melbourne during 1858 . Wills had been educated in England, at Rugby School and had played cricket for Cambridge University. The extent to which Wills was directly influenced by British and Irish football games is unknown, but there were similarities between some of them and his game. There were pronounced similarities between Wills's game and Gaelic football (as it would be codified in 1887). It appears that Australian Rules also has some similarities to the Indigenous Australian game of Marn Grook.<br><br>In most English-speaking countries, the word "football" usually refers to Association football , also known as soccer (soccer originally being a slang abbreviation of Association). Of the 45 national FIFA where english is an official or primary language, only four - Canada , New Zealand , Samoa and the United States - use soccer in their name, while the rest use football. In Australia, the governing body's renaming and increased usage of "football" rather than "soccer" has caused controversy as the word has traditionally been used to refer to Australian rules football and rugby league. It should be noted, however, that the Austalian association football team are still known as the "Socceroos".<br><br>consumer fanaticism - the level of involvement or interest one has in in the liking of a particular person, group, trend, artwork or idea <br>religious fanaticism - the most extreme form of religious fundamentalism which typical takes on violent, and potentially deadly dimensions <br><br>*****<br><br>a tip to intrepid travellers: never, ever, unless you're already that way inclined, mention the 's' word or the 'f' word to an aussie, particularly if they're from melboune, as the response leads to speculation that the dna responsible for said response must be hardwired right between the primitive flight and/or fight response.<br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>