Dear Miss Kate,
My parents came out to Australia from Scotland in the 40's ..... and til the time of their mortal passing .. I never heard them refer to the game as anything other than soccer .... they were foundation members of the Manly Warringah Soccer Club which played under the auspices of the NSW Soccer Association in the Australian Soccer Federation and our local news rag was the soccer post ...and it was commonly refered to as soccer in Engand until the 1980's .....
The word "soccer," which is believed to have originated in Britain some 200 years ago, comes from the official name of the sport, "association football." As other versions of the game evolved to include Rugby Football, it is believed the Brits adopted colloquialisms to distinguish each game.
"The rugby football game was shortened to 'rugger,' a term recognized in British English to the present day, and the association football game was, plausibly, shortened to 'soccer'" Szymanski writes. (Apparently ending words in "er" was a fad back then.)
Gradually, the term "soccer" gained popularity in the U.S. to distinguish the sport from American football. By the 1980s, the Brits began to part with the term, apparently, because it had become too "American."
PSS .... I have been calling it soccer all my life and I am not about to change now to please some British imperialistic conspiracy of elitist private school nancy's .......