Why is it that in rugby they’re required to touch the ball down on the ground in order to score, and they call that a “try,” but in football you don’t, and they call that a touchdown? I’m sure that both sports had a common origin, but why would the terminology get crossed up?
Well football originated out of rugby, which originated out of soccer when a bunch of guys at the Rugby School of Soccer in Rugby, England got sick of kicking the ball and picked it up…
Other than that, I don’t know much else about why the terms changed.
bob
Once again, the SDMB is telepathic! I was going to post a similar type question last week but, of course, forgot to do so.
My Q dovetails right into yours, Tom. In old b&w movies of early college (and Our Gang) football games, they do show the scorer touching the ball to the end zone gound after they score a… uhmm… touchdown.
What I want to know is, was this a “requirement,” like touching all the bases after hitting a homer; or was it just an optional traditional gesture carried over from rugby.
And if it was a requirement back then, when did it stop being so?
Not entirely sure of why there are all those changes, but you might like to try http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/tourism/rugcup.htm for a history of rugby and I’m sure that http://www.footballresearch.com/ would give you all sorts of info and the american variant (where people need to rest after running 20 yards).
Aren’t search engines wonderful things?
Rugby is a major English public (i.e. fee-paying) school, like Eton and Harrow. It was never a school of soccer. Most public schools have some sport which is peculiar to them (Eton has the wall game and fives, for example), it’s just that Rugby’s version of football caught on whereas the others didn’t.
It’s a ‘try’ in rugby because it used to not give you any points; it just allowed you to try to kick it through the uprights (a la the extra point in football). And you take the kick on a line from where you touched the ball down (eg., if you touch it down right next to the sideline, you have to take the kick from right next to the sideline as well), so there’s a distinct incentive to touch the ball down as close to the uprights as possible.
-ellis
The OED cites “touch down” back to 1864 in England and “touchdown” to 1876. And indeed you did have to touch the ball to the ground.
I would imagine that the rule requiring you to do this in American football was dispensed with well before the 20th century. 19th Century American football was mostly a series of violent pileups. It was hard to score unless you somehow succeeded in moving your pile of offensive players over the goal line.
However, I am only speculating.