Talk:List of oldest football competitions

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Australia: Sports / Australian rules football

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Calcutta Cup

Any particular reason the Calcutta Cup isn't in this list? 10th March 1879 seems to put it in the frame.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.98.0.249 (talk • contribs) 09:40, 29 July 2008

Accuracy

It is not surprising that this article is hard to give a proper response to. Prior to 1850 matches were held between groups for decades in England with a wide range of rules. You will often meet Australians who claim that rugby and association rules are younger sports and some even go on to say that they are hybrids of Australian rules. In actuality the sports that became Association Rules and Rugby had been played with a range of rules for a long time and it was these diverse rules that would be brought from England and eventually evolve into the hybrid game now known as Australian Rules. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.56.87.56 (talk) 03:22, 3 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This issue is often one or fierce debate and at times subject to a level of sporting chauvinism from soccer fans, particularly from England, but the facts are that a sporting activity between two teams with a ball like object has been played in many countries for thousands of years. In 19th century England some of the LOCAL VARIANTS variants of these activities were codified into a number of sets of rules that saw the emergence of Association Football (Soccer) and Rugby Football. At or about the same time in Australia, a separate football code emerged from the same 'soup' of footballing activity, making it a sibling to the other codes mentioned above, not an ancestor, not a descendant and not a cousin. 'A' set of Australian Football rules was codified earlier (1859) than the formation of the Football Association and its rules (1863) and that set of rules has continued to evolve unbroken since 1859. Please note I am not implying that Australian Rules is the older sport, simply that its rules were formalised earlier AND the game continued to evolve and be played based on that same original set of rules. A version of Rugby Football's rules were written in 1841, but as can be seen by their participation in the original Football Association meeting, there was no clear idea that Rugby, and what was to become soccer were to be. It should also be noted that the Cordner-Eggleston Cup first played in 1858 is still played to this day making it the oldest continuously contested cup in the world. Now, we can argue till the cows come home about which sport is oldest, but in my view they are contemporaneous. More to the point, it is completely inaccurate for soccer fans to claim soccer to be the progenitor of other codes of football (as many English soccer fans would have you believe), soccer is simply the most widespread and globally popular form. Further, the arrogance in claiming the exclusive right to refer to their sport as being the only activity that can rightly be called football, is breath taking in its ignorance of the history of their own sport. Sorry will get off my soap box now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.99.64.197 (talk) 03:56, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You are both right to a degree but you both miss the point as well. Yes Soccer, Australian Rules and Rugby are all sibling sports. English soccer fans and soccer fans the world over are not necessarily arrogant in their claims as forms of soccer and rugby existed for a long time before being codified and these non-codified rules could be rightly called the ancestor to Australian rules. So while association rules is indeed a sibling to Australian rules, in many respects the original form of association rules was not very different from many of the rules that already existed prior to its establishment. What is really sad is the insistence by Australians that Aussie Rules is an Australian Invention. Yes the rules were written in Australia, however the foundation that those rules sit upon and their history all derive from proto-soccer and proto-rugby and in that respect by insisting that Australian Rules came into being the date it was written and not before is turning its back on the sports heritage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.27.163.90 (talk) 01:12, 29 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Cambridge Collegiate Cup

According to the article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_University_Association_Football_League#Origins_of_collegiate_football the first competition for colleges at Cambridge was in 1882-1883. I may try to find some evidence of this in the university library but there is likely to be some record on the internet. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SAuhsoj (talk • contribs) 22:14, 18 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]