American, Aussie Rules, Gaelic, soccer, rugby…are you confused by all the variants of football floating around? Make sure you work it out before the starting whistle blows, writes Luke Clark 

‘How about a game of football?’ Next time you hear such a question, beware. In a cultural crossroads like Singapore, you could end up on a rectangular or an oval field, where you may kick, throw, head, bounce or even punch a round or an oval ball towards a net, two open posts – or both at once. The scarier part is what your opponent is allowed to do to you. Depending on the game, this ranges from kicking your ball away to driving you at pace through the nearest wall. All totally within the rules of, ahem, football. 


Getting hit in US football is akin to being in a car accident

When asked to play, first ask your potential destroyers where in the world they’re from. If it’s Brazil, Germany, Spain, Russia or most of Asia and Africa, chances are football means soccer – the game arguably most deserving of the name ‘football’, given that it is played mainly with the feet. Yet if you’re offered a football game in New Zealand or South Africa, it’s a good bet you’ll get rugby union. Football in Chicago means American football. In Calgary, Canadian football. In Dublin, Gaelic football. In Melbourne, it’s Australian Rules football – while 700km away in Sydney, football means rugby league. Confused? Well, in Britain, the word mainly refers to soccer, but in certain circles can also connote rugby. 

If William Webb Ellis had been less of a troublemaker, none of this may have happened. History instead dictated that the precocious student of Rugby School in England showed such ‘a fine disregard for the rules of football’ that on a fateful day in 1823, he picked up his soccer ball and ran with it. Today, many wish the English soccer team would follow suit. Not only did this single act of sporting rebellion help create the sport of rugby union, it also set in place the anarchic DIY spirit that led to the wild and bafflingly wide variety of games known as football. 

If the person offering you a game of football is Dhani Jones, tell him you’re washing your hair. The American football linebacker for the Cincinnati Bengals was recently in Singapore during his off-season from the National Football League (NFL). In his words: ‘American football is short bursts, high impact and violent hits.’ Sounds like fun. Jones has been travelling the world recording a Travel Channel show on local sports, in which he tries out a region’s game and films the result. For the show’s pilot he gave rugby union a try, playing for Blackheath against Launceston. How did it compare to his full-time job, besides the obvious pads/no pads distinction? 

‘In rugby, the impacts are more [from] positional orientation rather than sheer power,’ Jones says. ‘In American football, it’s more trying to knock a guy out. You’re protected, so you’re just trying to disrupt his brains, so that he gets knocked out. It’s an all-power sport.’ But rugby is no less physical, Jones explains – it’s just played for a longer duration. ‘Rugby is a more sustained amount of energy,’ he says. ‘You’re always running. American football is always stop and start. A lot of the time, you have breaks in order to recover.’ 

The best way to imagine playing an NFL game? Picture crashing your car on the off-ramp of the Pan-Island Expressway – then having that accident over and over again. ‘Yeah, [American] football collisions have been compared to a mild car accident,’ Jones admits. ‘I’m 6ft 1in [1.86m], 230 pounds [104kg]. And the people that I usually end up having collisions with are 6ft 7in [2.04m], 360 pounds [163kg]. They are coming full-tilt at me. I have to make sure that I hit them, in order to cause enough energy to separate myself from them, stop their movement, and allow myself to keep going.’ 

In the interests of inter-football rivalry: isn’t soccer a girl’s game in America? Jones is having none of it, ar-guing that icons like David Beckham have drawn men to soccer in the US. ‘In high school my friends used to play all the time, and I played soccer until my freshman year,’ Jones says. ‘I chose football mainly because that was what I was used to. Who knows if I would have been better at American soccer.’ Do we want to know? Soccer players wouldn’t know what hit them. 

Despite the differences, Jones enjoyed the Webb Ellis version of football. ‘I had a great time,’ he says. ‘The level I played wasn’t necessarily the national team, but it was a fair group of individuals – some actually were professional and some were not. We had fun, we worked hard. Every day was a different practice, and whether it was “bloody Tuesday” or “workout Thursday”, practising is sort of the same essence.’ 

So what’s the common essence of football, no matter where it’s played? Easy enough: ‘It’s teamwork.’

The famous five 
American football 
Alias: Gridiron Players: 11 per side, up to 46 playing different roles 
Scoring: Touchdowns, when a player runs the ball to his opponent’s end zone (six points), conversions (one or two points), field goals (three points) and safeties (two points) 

Association football 
Alias: Soccer 
Players: 11 per team 
Scoring: Goals – ball into the opponent’s net (one point) 

Australian Rules football 
Alias: Aussie Rules or ‘footie’ (big in Victoria and South Australia) 
Players: 18 per team 
Scoring: Goals, when the football is propelled through the goalposts (six points), and ‘behinds’, when it passes between a goalpost and a behind post (one point) 

Rugby league 
Alias: League (big in Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain and Ireland) 
Players: 13 per team 
Scoring: Tries, when the ball is touched down over the opponent’s try line (four points), and when the ball is kicked through the opponent’s upright goal posts on penalties (two points), drop kicks (one point) and conversions (two points) 

Rugby union 
Alias: Rugby (played all over the world) 
Players: 15 per team Scoring: Tries (five points), penalty kicks (three points), drop kicks (three points) and conversions (two points)

 Association Football
• Strange fact: Of all the types of football, soccer is the only one where you can’t use your hands, unless you are the goalkeeper. Argentine star Diego Maradona once scored a famous World Cup goal with his hand, claiming it was the ‘hand of God’.

Australian Rules Football
• Strange fact: Originating in Melbourne and played on an oval field, Aussie Rules is a gladiatorial, free-flowing game designed for live viewing – which would explain the 97,302 spectators who turn out for Australian Football League (AFL) Grand Final, making it the best-attended domestic club championship event in the world.

American Football
• Strange fact: Much to the derision of those who play rugby, American football players wear extensive padding and helmets – but chiefly because the sport is specifically designed as a collision sport.

Rugby League
• Strange fact: League has elements of both rugby and American football. Tackled players restart with a ‘play-the-ball’, raking it along the ground to a team-mate.

Rugby Union
• Strange fact: Rugby’s strangest creation, the 16-man ‘scrum’, resembles a creature with 32 legs that’s ‘fed’ the ball as a way to restart the game. Luke Clark