> Australia has its own 'football'

In fact, we have multiple: 'football' here can refer to rugby league in QLD and NSW, AFL in pretty much every other state (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barassi_Line ), or soccer.

Oddly in most of Europe it's 'football' as well, EUFA, IFA, Ligue de Football and so on, seems to be quite fractured depending on whereabouts in the world you are, and with the rise in people learning American English through TV/movies/etc I can see it becoming more popular to call it soccer.

Over the last few years, there has been a move in Australia to use "football" for soccer. The 3 other footballs (rugby league, rugby union and AFL) are more commonly "rugby" or "footy".

(At least, that's what I've noticed.)