Soccer? Rugger? Football? Footy?

"Archery was essential for defence of the realm; football wasn't....
    "Small wonder that the game was royally disliked. Its origins were as common as gum under a tavern table. At first it didn't even have a name with any distinction. All the royal edicts called it 'ball play or 'playing at ball.' The term 'football' first appeared in a 1486 document, but it didn't mean a game in which a foot came into contact with a ball. Instead, it meant a game played 'on foot' rather than on horse, as was royally-approved jousting. The name also showed that football belonged to the commoners; only the nobility could afford to use horses for games!"

~ PFRA Research, from their article 'A Friendly Kinde of Fight: The Origins of Football to 1633'

"The earliest written reference to a game called 'football' dates from the 15th century, although the game itself has been around a lot longer.
   "In its oldest versions, any part of the body could be used to control the ball or tackle opponents. The name it acquired refers not to the fact that only the feet could be used to propel the ball, but that the game was played on foot. This marked it out as a game played by ordinary people, as distinct from the team games of the nobility which were played on horseback....
   "This early knockabout version of football probably derived from a game called 'harpastum,' which was played by Roman soldiers. This would have looked a little like our modern-day rugby and was used as a training exercise. It involved plenty of body-tackling and general commotion. The locals then perhaps created their own rough-and-ready version."

~ from 'History of Football,' from ICONS Online (commissioned by UK's Department for Culture, Media and Sport)

"Football, by the way, originally just meant any game played on foot, as apart from a game played on horseback. So it’s been a game of the streets, indeed much of the early history of football is told from the ways in which it was banned by successive monarchs, who felt that playing football would take people away from archery; equestrian sports were more obviously of military value.
    "With the growth of industrialisation in England from the middle of the 18th century, with urbanisation and the move from the fields to the cities, then the nature of the game might change. The sort of football played on paved streets is different from a game played in the fields....
    "INTERVIEWER: Where does the name ‘soccer’ come from?
    "A: There’s nothing definite in that. But essentially by the turn of the century, one of the stories is someone asked one of the chaps at school, ‘Want to come together at Rugger, old chap’ and he said, ‘No, I think I’ll stay and have a game of soccer’, and it’s the Association Football, shortened to soccer. As ‘rugger’ and ‘Assoc’ becomes ‘soccer’....
    "In 1863 after a series of discussions in the paper, in the field, that a group of old boys from the various Public Schools got together in London in the Freemasons’ Tavern in October of 1863, and founded the Football Association. That is the defining moment in the founding of soccer. It also the defining moment in the first football code, Rugby, which had been played at Rugby School for decades before that ... the essential difference then between the two major forms of football, one is the game in which you run with the ball, carrying it, and the other is the dribbling game. Much of that would depend on the school you went to. Rugby, wide open spaces, green grass, you could run, you could tackle, you could play the rough game. If you were playing at Winchester or the Cloisters on hard grounds, then you had bans because of space, of the surface, on handling and running and tackling."

~ sports historian Bill Murray, from an interview on the ABC's Sports Factor

"The English roll their eyes when Americans talk about 'soccer.' But actually, it's what the game should be called. And it's a British word....
    "The word comes from 19th-century British slang for Association Rules football, a kicking and dribbling game that was distinct from Rugby rules football back when both versions were played by British schoolboys. The lads who preferred the rougher game popular in schools like Rugby and Eton seceded from Britain's fledgling Football Association in 1871 to write their own rules, and soon players were calling the two sorts of football rugger and soccer.

~ Der Speigel, from its article 'It's Called Soccer'

Meanwhile, in a land down under ...

"Since its creation in Melbourne in the 1850s ... it [Australian Football] has evolved to a higher form, leaving behind other codes, which the writer Oriel Gray termed 'necessary steps in the ascent of man'."

~ Stephen Alomes, from his chapter 'Tales of a Dreamtime: Australian Football as a Secular Religion,' p.48