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In Australia, soccer, also known as association football, is the most played outdoor team sport, [3] [4] and ranked in the top ten for television audience as of 2015. [5] The national governing body of the sport is Football Australia (FA) which comprises nine state and territory member federations, which oversee the sport within their respective region.
The Macquarie Dictionary observed, writing prior to 2010: "While it is still the case that, in general use, soccer is the preferred term in Australia for what most of the world calls football, the fact that the peak body in Australia has officially adopted the term football for this sport will undoubtedly cause a shift in usage."
Soccer has the highest participation rate in every state and territory except South Australia and the Northern Territory where Australian Football is the most played. Soccer has the highest participation nationally in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, where more than 7% of the population regularly play it.
Within the English-speaking world, the sport is now usually called "football" in Great Britain and most of Ulster in the north of Ireland, [9] whereas people usually call it "soccer" in regions and countries where other codes of football are prevalent, such as Australia, [10] Canada, South Africa, most of Ireland (excluding Ulster), [11] and ...
In those two countries, other codes of football are dominant, and soccer is the prevailing term for association football. In 2005, Australia's association football governing body changed its name from soccer to football to align with the general international usage of the term. [1] In 2006, New Zealand decided to follow suit. [2]
Athletics Australia held a competition for a nickname for its squad for the 2001 World Athletics Championships. [18] The winning entry was "the Diggers", from the nickname for ANZAC soldiers. [18] This was quickly abandoned [19] after criticism from the Returned and Services League of Australia and others that this was an inappropriate use of ...
The Council officially renamed the sport to "Australian National Football" (later "National Football" and "National Australian Football") in an effort to emphasize its Australian origin and further differentiate it from rugby and soccer which were becoming more popular in New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory.
Australia competed internationally at junior level. Australia's national teams remain undefeated. From 2007 to 2019 the underage men's team competed annually against international opponents as the AFL Academy most recently against New Zealand. Australia has also fielded amateur teams against South Africa, Papua New Guinea and the United States.