football game

Football

Football refers to a number of sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ballwith the foot to score a goal. The most popular of these sports worldwide isassociation football, more commonly known as just "football" or "soccer". Unqualified, the word football applies to whichever form of football is the most popular in the regional context in which the word appears, including association football, as well asAmerican football, Australian rules football, Canadian football, Gaelic football, rugby league, rugby union,and other related games. These variations of football are known as football codes.

Various forms of football can be identified in history, often as popular peasant games. Contemporary codes of football can be traced back to the codification of these games at English public schools in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.The influence and power of the British Empire allowed these rules of football to spread to areas of British influence outside of the directly controlled Empire,though by the end of the nineteenth century, distinct regional codes were already developing: Gaelic Football, for example, deliberately incorporated the rules of local traditional football games in order to maintain their heritage. In 1888, The Football League was founded in England, becoming the first of many professional football competitions. During the twentieth century, several of the various kinds of football grew to become among the most popular team sports in the world.

Football at the Island Games

Football has been a regular event since 1989 at the Island Games, the biennial multi-sports event for island nations, territories and dependencies. A 5-a-side competition for under-16s was held at the inaugural event on the Isle of Man, and the success this minor competition brought to the games meant senior men's football was included on the itinerary for the first time in the Faroe Islands, in 1989. Women's football was included on the games' schedule for the first time in 2001.

Over the years, the competition has grown in stature, becoming one of the most important competitions for 'national' teams in non-FIFA football, and has grown from a five-team round robin competition to a 16-team tournament.