Petition to change the name of the soccer forum

bamboozling

When the 'soccer' forum was created it was mis-labelled. For whatever reason I'm not sure. Nevertheless the the name of the forum should be changed to football.

The name of the game is association football, otherwise known as football. For example we have Liverpool Football club, and Real Madrid Club de Fútbol and Fußball-Club Bayern München.

We can see that the name of the game is football yet for some archaic reason the football forum on boards is reffered to as the soccer forum.

This doesn't sit right with me at all. Soccer is a horrible Americanism that people from the abysses of Ireland use to distinguish from the mighty Gaelic Football, ah yes the game where I suppose 70% of passes completed are not from the foot.

Real fans of the game refer to the sport as football.

If enough forum members concur shouldn't the name be changed?

Perhaps we should rename the American Football forum the Gridiron forum in order the continue the boards tradition of using old names.

mike65

Trust me, we have been down this muddy boreen more than once before and without any success. The debate will go something like - soccer is actually a correct term and has been used since the early days of the game, there would be be unnecessary confusion with Gaelic football, and finally - we are the admins and you lose!

The rules of association football were codified in the United Kingdom by the Football Association in 1863, and the name association football was coined to distinguish the game from the other versions of football played at the time, such as rugby football. The word soccer is a colloquial abbreviation of association (from assoc.) and first appeared in the 1880s. An early usage found in an English 1892 periodical.[1] The word is sometimes credited to Charles Wreford Brown, an Oxford University student said to have been fond of shortened forms such as brekkers for breakfast and rugger for rugby football. (See Oxford -er) Clive Toye noted that even English people called the game "soccer" interchangeably with "football" until the 1970s. "A quirk of British culture is the permanent need to familiarize names by shortening them. ... Toye [said] 'They took the third, fourth and fifth letters of Association and called it SOCcer.'”[2]

The term association football has never been widely used, although in Britain some clubs in rugby football strongholds adopted the suffix Association Football Club (A.F.C.) to avoid confusion with the dominant sport in their area, and FIFA, the world governing body for the sport, is a French-language acronym of "Fédération Internationale de Football Association" – the International Federation of Association Football. "Soccer football", is used less often than it once was: the United States Soccer Federation was known as the United States Soccer Football Association from 1945 until 1974, when it adopted its current name. Some soccer clubs, in Australia for example, still contain the words "soccer football" in their titles.

The game is now generally known in English as "football" or "soccer", with the relative prevalence of the two words varying from country to country (in Australia, Canada and the United States, for example, local "football" codes are prevalent)

bamboozling

mike65 wrote: »

Trust me, we have been down this muddy boreen more than once before and without any success. The debate will go something like - soccer is actually a correct term and has been used since the early days of the game, there would be be unnecessary confusion with Gaelic football, and finally - we are the admins and you lose!

Soccer has been used yet the game in Ireland and England is referred to as Football.

It would take quite the imbecil to confuse Football and Gaelic Football. I know boards loves to pander to the whimsical needs of new users, to make the site more 'user friendly' but surely they couldn't possibly be confused.

Ah the ol' we Admins are superior. Forgot about that.

mike65

They shouldn't be confused at all of course as there is in fact no (Gaelic) Football forum - only a GAA one.

Insect Overlord

bamboozling wrote: »

It would take quite the imbecil to confuse Football and Gaelic Football. I know boards loves to pander to the whimsical needs of new users, to make the site more 'user friendly' but surely they couldn't possibly be confused.

Loving the attitude, B.

You want to change the name of a forum, nine years after it was started. This despite the fact you only joined the site in the last two years. And then you say it won't be changed because of pandering to the needs of new posters.

I must say, I have to admire the incredible feat of logical gymnastics you've just performed there. Bravo, sir.

bamboozling

Insect Overlord wrote: »

Loving the attitude, B.

You want to change the name of a forum, nine years after it was started. This despite the fact you only joined the site in the last two years. And then you say it won't be changed because of pandering to the needs of new posters.

I must say, I have to admire the incredible feat of logical gymnastics you've just performed there. Bravo, sir.

Hey Insect Overlord,

Yes, I think the forum should be called the football forum. The forum should be called it's rightful name.

The proper thing to do is the proper thing to do, regardless of the time. Was boards called boards when it started out in 1998? Me thinks the answer in nay.

I've been around Boards far longer than my join date suggests.

Within the last two or three years or so the management of boards changed the ethos of the operation. Whereas once there was a sense of community where users were respected and their opinions listened to.

That changed over the past while as management became obsessed with attracting new users, to the detriment of long serving users. The new buzz words became, hits per month, registered accounts and how in many media outlers boards were being mentioned.

We have the whole thing of making the site more 'user friendly.' Boards changed a while ago and many people have seen this. To be honest the day all the smods became admins was the day boards changed for the worse.

Perhaps this is the logic gymnastics you are referring to.

murpho999

Soccer/football.....who cares, we all know what it means. Little to worry about to be honest.

Also, I thought a petition was a collection of signatures to support a campaign? This seems more like a one person gripe to me.

bamboozling

murpho999 wrote: »

Soccer/football.....who cares, we all know what it means. Little to worry about to be honest.

Also, I thought a petition was a collection of signatures to support a campaign? This seems more like a one person gripe to me.

Petition means to make a written request.

Alopex

Soccer doesn't have the rights to the word "football'

sure I'd say football in normal speech but its not correct. A website should use proper terminology.

stovelid

Please tell me you have an off button.

bamboozling

stovelid wrote: »

Please tell me you have an off button.

What do you mean?

stovelid

bamboozling wrote: »

What do you mean?

I'm sick of reading the deluge of bollocks you are subjecting the soccer forum to lately.

And don't PM me any more missives from "The Bam Man" again, thanks.

bamboozling

stovelid wrote: »

I'm sick of reading the deluge of bollocks you are subjecting the soccer forum to lately.

And don't PM me any more missives from "Bam the Man" again, thanks.

Look you are dragging this thread wildly off topic. This thread is about the farcical situation that exists where the Football forum is called the soccer forum.

Let's not have petty little squables and bitter feelings cloud this matter.

RolandIRL

From under the soccer forum when viewed at Sports->Soccer

Football, soccer, whatever you want to call it....

Who cares what it's called? Seems a trivial thing to be worrying about imo, like complaining that the Films forum should be called Movies instead. Everyone knows what it's about so why bother?

Sparks

If its real name is Association Football, then surely it's not the Football forum but the Association Football forum, the same way the American Football forum is called the American Football forum instead of the Football forum.

And if Soccer is well understood to mean Association Football, then calling it the Soccer forum is more correct than calling it the Football forum. And since Soccer is less of a mouthful than Association Football, it makes logical sense to call it the Soccer forum rather than the Football forum when looking for a short, easy to remember name.

tl;dr - Oh ffs, give over. It's not like anyone's really confused.

bamboozling

Sparks wrote: »

If its real name is Association Football, then surely it's not the Football forum but the Association Football forum, the same way the American Football forum is called the American Football forum instead of the Football forum.

And if Soccer is well understood to mean Association Football, then calling it the Soccer forum is more correct than calling it the Football forum. And since Soccer is less of a mouthful than Association Football, it makes logical sense to call it the Soccer forum rather than the Football forum when looking for a short, easy to remember name.

tl;dr - Oh ffs, give over. It's not like anyone's really confused.

I'm gonna give you a brief history lesson. First there was a game called football. And then there was rugby football after the game was founded in a town called rugby. Then came American football after a sport originating from the Americas. Then came Austrailian rules football which originated as an Australian version of football.

The sport is called football not soccer.

It's not about mouthfuls it's about doing the right thing and calling the sport by its proper name.

Sparks

bamboozling wrote: »

I'm gonna give you a brief history lesson. First there was a game called football. And then there was rugby football after the game was founded in a town called rugby. Then came American football after a sport originating from the Americas. Then came Austrailian rules football which originated as an Australian version of football.

The sport is called football not soccer.

It's not about mouthfuls it's about doing the right thing and calling the sport by its proper name.

Oh. History. Okay, in that case, the name of the game is actually foteball as defined in 1363 by King Edward III. You could go back further than that, but you'd have to call it ball or the ba game if you did, and I think ba game is actually still played in scotland occasionally and it's not really soccer at all. (Yes, there's a reference to footballs in 1314, but they're "foot balls" and the game was still called "ball").

Or do we need to do the whole "but that doesn't count!" argument? Because then I need to point out that FIFA's 2011/2012 Laws of the Game do not actually contain any official definition of what the name of the game is. "Football" is only used to describe the game in one place in the entire document, "association football" is used three times, but nowhere is there an official "this is the name we're going to use" statement.

Which is probably because the term "football" is basicly slang and means different things in different places. In England, it means Association Football. In the US, it means American Football. In Australia, it means Australian Rules Football. And in Ireland, it means GAA football.

Now if FIFA think that this is such a trivial matter that it doesn't even need to provide a definition of the official name in the basic rules of the game (which go right down to stating what kind of grass to play the game on), then I think we're well past the point where we can use "Oh, ffs, give over" as an official response to an argument about what name to call a forum that talks about the game...

Overheal

bamboozling wrote: »

Look you are dragging this thread wildly off topic. This thread is about the farcical situation that exists where the Football forum is called the soccer forum.

Really I thought it was about SMods and Corporate Ethos and stuff

bamboozling

Sparks wrote: »

Oh. History. Okay, in that case, the name of the game is actually foteball as defined in 1363 by King Edward III. You could go back further than that, but you'd have to call it ball or the ba game if you did, and I think ba game is actually still played in scotland occasionally and it's not really soccer at all. (Yes, there's a reference to footballs in 1314, but they're "foot balls" and the game was still called "ball").

Or do we need to do the whole "but that doesn't count!" argument? Because then I need to point out that FIFA's 2011/2012 Laws of the Game do not actually contain any official definition of what the name of the game is. "Football" is only used to describe the game in one place in the entire document, "association football" is used three times, but nowhere is there an official "this is the name we're going to use" statement.

Which is probably because the term "football" is basicly slang and means different things in different places. In England, it means Association Football. In the US, it means American Football. In Australia, it means Australian Rules Football. And in Ireland, it means GAA football.

Now if FIFA think that this is such a trivial matter that it doesn't even need to provide a definition of the official name in the basic rules of the game (which go right down to stating what kind of grass to play the game on), then I think we're well past the point where we can use "Oh, ffs, give over" as an official response to an argument about what name to call a forum that talks about the game...

Yes all very well but I would challenge the bit where in Ireland it means Gaelic Football. For culchies and followers of teh Gah then yes Football refers to Gaelic Football. For the more cultured elements of society football refers to association football.

However how come the in most languages the name of the sport is a translation of football not soccer. This is because soccer is an Americanism whereas this side of the pond we refer to football. We call the game football.

The forum should be called football.

Overheal wrote: »

Really I thought it was about SMods and Corporate Ethos and stuff

That was a mere digression in order to broadscast a rather broad point.

pickarooney

Soccer fans - verily the last true cultured elements of Irish society.

Sparks

bamboozling wrote: »

soccer is an Americanism

Actually "Soccer" is an English word, showing up in England in the 19th century as an abbreviation of the "Association" in "Association Football".

Overheal

See also: Names for association football
The rules of football were codified in England by the Football Association in 1863 and the name association football was coined to distinguish the game from the other forms of football played at the time, specifically rugby football. The term soccer originated in England, first appearing in the 1880s as an Oxford "-er" abbreviation of the word "association".[6]

#15

Soccer is the most common term for the sport in most English speaking countries, isn't it?
I don't see where the problem is.

Diabhal Beag

There is no problem whatsoever. Just the OP trying to annoy people.

mike65

I raised the soccer origins before the rest of you, I demand to be thanked.

Thank you.

5starpool

I always call it football, except when referring to the soccer forum.

However, even though I practically never use the word there is a lot of hypocrisy shown towards the word. A prime example is when British people on tv use the word 'soccer' disparagingly towards Americans, but fail to acknowledge that 2 of the flagship tv programmes in Britain are called Soccer Saturday, and Soccer AM.

OP, are you petitioning sky for a change there too? There are more annoying things in that forum than it's name, tbh.

LoLth

I think we've heard good feedback from both sides of the soccer/football camp.

Currently the forum is called soccer and , up to now, I cannot recall any user ever having any trouble knowing exactly what it is when they see it or wondering where the "english football" forum is seeing as there is "american football" one.

based purely on historical evidence taken from boards.ie I dont see the need for a name change.

LoLth