Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Australia, slang, derogatory, ethnic slur
soccer
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
wog + ball, since the game is played more by foreigners than by those born in Australia.
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Examples
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And that's helped put the sport that was once sidelined as "wogball" centre stage.
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They leave soccer/wogball to those from "the land of the fallafel" E.
England's World Cup dream hinges on Kevin Pietersen gamble | Mike Selvey 2011
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You know very well that putting the boot into wogball is still the ‘acceptable’ face of migrant bashing.
Cheeseburger Gothic » And now I owe Doc Yobbo two bucks. 2010
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During any Grand Final (That is NRL, AFL and even ARU … … wogball is getting up there as well), if you support opposite teams, you may have been the best of mates for a life time but come kick-off, you can just fuck right off to the other corner pal.
Skippy's List 2009
bilby commented on the word wogball
"Wogball they used to call it, a term that irritated the hell out of Johnny Warren, the legendary soccer commentator who played in Australia's World Cup side in 1974. Warren was a driving force in demanding that the game in Australia be called football, not soccer, because to his ears soccer was an ugly word and football a beautiful one."
- Greg Callaghan, In leaps and bounds, theaustralian.com.au, 3 August 2009.
August 3, 2009
chained_bear commented on the word wogball
Wogball? Really? Where did that term come from?
August 3, 2009
bilby commented on the word wogball
Wog is Australian slang for a migrant, especially of non-British origin.
During the time Warren was a player and then commentator, a lot of teams were ethnically-based. In any given league you would typically find a team of Italian migrants, Greek migrants, Yugoslav migrants and so on. In my university days I even remember coming up against a team whose players were all from Mauritius of all places. Hence there was a perception that football was a sport played only by wogs --> wogball. The truth was that anglo-Australians played football as much as any other sport.
In the revamped national league (only 4 seasons old), and indeed in most state leagues, clubs are now forbidden from using ethnic names and symbols. Hence no more South Melbourne Hellas, Preston Makedonia, Canberra Croatia, Sydney Hakoah, etc.
August 3, 2009
chained_bear commented on the word wogball
Ah. Thanks for explaining. My limited understanding of the term 'wog' was that it applied only to Italian immigrants, and of course the term 'wogball' therefore has a far broader background. It makes much more sense now.
Still kind of a yicky term though...
August 4, 2009
madmouth commented on the word wogball
c_b, I think you're confusing wog and wop. wog is an anti-Asian (in the British sense, meaning East Indian immigrants) slur. the Mauritius extraction in the Australian origins of wogball fits the term, as Mauritius has a large Hindi population.
August 4, 2009
sionnach commented on the word wogball
Isn't 'wog' an acronym for 'western oriental gentleman' (definitely intended as a slur)?
August 4, 2009
bilby commented on the word wogball
Backronym of posh quality.
August 4, 2009
chained_bear commented on the word wogball
No, I wasn't thinking of wop. I'm familiar with that term (it's also known in the U.S.), but wog was used in my presence in Australia (eons ago) in the same manner (and is not generally known in the U.S.--that I know of).
August 4, 2009
madmouth commented on the word wogball
I didn't even know there was an Italian immigrant population in Australia! Wordie is Learndie
August 4, 2009
bilby commented on the word wogball
Over 800 thousand people (from a total population of about 22 million) claim to have Italian ancestry.
August 4, 2009
madmouth commented on the word wogball
oh, I don't doubt it. it's just hard to conjure the same sort of deli and soccer cafe vision in Australia that one sees in the rest of the West. one is so much more aware of the other populations.
August 4, 2009
chained_bear commented on the word wogball
Madmouth, I had the same eye-opening mindwave when I found out there's a large Japanese immigrant population in Peru. It stands to reason, of course, but it was just something I never thought about. (If desired, silently insert eye-rolling sarcasm about insular, provincial Americans here.)
I remember being told quite often at the time I lived in Australia that "there are more Greeks in Melbourne than there are in Athens." That doesn't say anything about the Italian-Australian population, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless...
I also found interesting that there were a bunch of "IAC"s, which stands for Italian-Australian Club. My hometown in PA has an "Italian Lodge," which is essentially the same thing, but being a young and naive cub, I didn't think that other countries would have such things. I have (relatively) fond memories of getting completely blotto at one of the Australian ones.
August 4, 2009
madmouth commented on the word wogball
finally, an explanation for Alberto Fujimori.
I had wondered about him for a long time
August 5, 2009
chained_bear commented on the word wogball
Ha! That's exactly how I found out! :)
August 5, 2009