I have friends who still sometimes pull me up when I use the word 'soccer' to describe the round ball game. 'Our football is the one where you use your feet', they say.
My main issue with their argument is that any use of the word 'football' in modern Australia is inevitably followed up by a second question – 'which code?' – and a nauseating discussion about who has the right to use the term.
So in the interests of my own sanity, and as peace gesture, I have given up using the word 'football' for any code. I now almost exclusively use the terms soccer, Aussie rules (or 'footy' if I'm with the fellow faithful), rugby (union) or league to describe the various games that have captured the imaginations of generations of sporting fans in Australia.
If the popularity of the Asian Cup – which the Socceroos won last weekend – is anything to go by, it seems that many other Australian fans of different football codes are also finding ways to make peace with the round ball game these days.
A sell-out crowd of more than 76,000 watched the final against Korea last Saturday night in Sydney, with nearly three million watching the game on television. This followed sell-out crowds at Socceroos matches in Melbourne, Brisbane and Newcastle. In total, around 650,000 fans attended matches across the tournament.
In the aftermath of the tournament, the football code wars are very much heating up between the various Australian sporting administration bodies.
One commentator joked before the Asian Cup final that soccer's organising body, Football Federation Australia, seemed more excited at the TV ratings the Asian Cup was generating than in the Socceroos' results. But Football Federation Australia has every right to bask in the success of the tournament, particularly after it had been dismissed before it even started as a 'lemon' by AFL heavyweight Eddie McGuire.
The crowd and ratings figures from the Asian Cup vindicate their belief in the game's ability to capture the attention of Australians. That success may now help the A League achieve the sort of commercial free-to-air exposure that cricket's Big Bash League has profited from this season. A similar commercial TV arrangement for the A League would make that competition even more of a fixture on the summer sporting calendar.
Yet while administrators will continue to snipe at each other as they seek a commercial advantage for their sport, it's interesting to note that many of the same people taking to Twitter to follow the Socceroos were also tweeting about the latest BBL match and the Australian Open tennis – and that both the BBL and the Australian Open achieved record crowds this summer. Soccer has claimed its place in the consciousness of the Australian public, but it's yet to be – as its advocates may have hoped and detractors may have feared – at the expense of any other sport.
The football code wars might make sense in the board rooms and the minds of die-hard tragics who want more opportunities to watch the sport they love, but they make little sense to newer fans of the sport like me. I started to follow the Socceroos ahead of the 2006 World Cup, and my interest in them has grown to the point that I travelled interstate to watch them play in Sydney and Brisbane at the Asian Cup. Yet I also watched the BBL and the tennis, and will be following the Australians at the cricket World Cup. I'll also continue to follow the Richmond Football Club in the AFL, no matter how much it might pain me at times.
To me, what matters is not the shape of the ball, but whether a sport can provide great stories and spectacles on the field. Soccer, with its heroes such as Tim Cahill and Massimo Luongo shining on an international stage, provides that in spades. Right now, it has my – and Australia's – attention.
Michael McVeigh is the editor of Australian Catholics magazine and senior editor at Jesuit Communications.