Hi, > The US > and OZ are the only countries that I can see who have developed their own > game(Football) and not slavishly followed this soccer nonsense.LOL
ahem! perhaps you can't see England. We developed a few of our own games. However, you may be right about Aussie rules. My father, who was quite a sportsman in his youth, and a fan of all ball games, developed a passion for Aussie rules when we lived there and considered it the best of the football games. Personally I think it looks an awful lot like Gaelic Football, which is one of the very old football games. I should think it's impossible to disentangle the histories of the various types of football and bat & ball games. The fact is that different regional versions were played in the British Isles for centuries before the Georgians and Victorians started to unify and formalise them. At the same time the different versions were being exported to the colonies, and various colonial games - like polo & lacrosse - were making the reverse journey before being re-exported. All of which then began their parallel evolutions, splitting and rejoining at various times. In parts of the UK the 'original' football games are still played. I went to school in a town called Ashbourne, were they play Shrovetide football every year, which is a form of licensed rioting. It was from games like this that all the others evolved. http://www.bbc.co.uk/derby/features/attractions/ashbourne_shrovetide_football/index.shtml -- Cheers, Bob
