With the football world cup started, let's get sporty and look at the history of soccer in Sydney (or football as it is known internationally). We don't have a specific article about soccer in the Dictionary, but we do have an excellent overview thematic essay by Richard Cashman all about the development of sport in Sydney. The first recorded match of soccer was played at Parramatta Common on Saturday 14 August 1880. The game was organised by John Walter Fletcher, who had been elected by an interested group within the community to form an 'Association Rules' football club. Fletcher's team was known as The Wanderers and they played a team made up of students from The Kings School First XV rugby club. The NSW English Football Association was subsequently established in 1882. In 1912, Sydney led the world by adopting the numbering of soccer players. This was introduced by all senior Sydney soccer clubs and was a world first. There were plans to form an Australian Soccer Association, but World War One intervened, and the idea was put on hold. International tours were popular in Sydney the 1920s. Chinese soccer teams toured Australia in 1923, when a Sydney Cricket Ground crowd of 47,500 watched Australia play, and again in 1927. English teams toured in 1925 and 1937. When the English team played at the Sydney Showground in 1925, a crowd of 49,500 spectators watched the action. For the record, Australia lost this match against England. Soccer really took off in the post war period. Immigrants began to make their mark on a number of sports and ethnically based soccer clubs emerged from the 1950s. Clubs linked to ethnic communities, such as APIA (Italian), Hakoah (Jewish) and Prague (Czech) became prominent in Sydney soccer competition by the late 1950s. Disgruntled by the treatment of ethnic clubs by the British-Australian officials, some clubs left to form the New South Wales Federation of Soccer Clubs in 1957. There was far greater commercialism and professionalism in Sydney sport after 1970 and privatisation and corporatisation appeared in many sports. Globalisation created both strains and new opportunities. The 1970s also marked the beginnings of the transformation of suburban competitions into national competitions - not only in soccer, but also rugby league, Australian football and basketball, in search of larger audiences. The National Soccer League was formed in 1977 and many other codes followed suit. Australian soccer created a new national competition in 2004/5, with eight teams based in the major cities and regional centres of Australia and one team from New Zealand. Sydney FC won the inaugural A-League championships in 2005/06 and, as a result, competed against Asian teams in the AFC Champions league in 2007. You can read more about the history of sport in Sydney here.  Soccer fans should take a look at the Migration Heritage Centre's exhibition from 2006 called The World Cup Dream: Sories of Australia's Soccer Mum's and Dad's  There is a timeline of the history of soccer in Australia and some oral history interviews, including one with Australia's best known football commentator and author, Les Murray. --- You can listen to Lisa's segment with Mitch on the history of sport in Sydney on 2SER here.