History of Tasmania
Tasmania was inhabited by an indigenous population, the Tasmanian Aborigines, and evidence indicates their presence in the territory, later to become an island, at least 35,000 years ago. At the time of the British occupation and colonisation in 1803 the indigenous population was estimated at between 3000 and 10,000. Historian Lyndall Ryan's analysis of population studies led her to conclude that there were about 7000 spread throughout the island's nine nations; Nicholas Clements, citing research by N.J.B. Plomley and Rhys Jones, settled on a figure of 3000 to 4000. The combination of the so-called Black War, internecine conflict and, from the late 1820s, the spread of infectious diseases to which they had no immunity, reduced the population to about 300 by 1833. Almost all of the indigenous population was relocated to Flinders Island by George Augustus Robinson. Until the 1970s, most people thought that the last surviving Tasmanian Aborigine was Trugernanner, who died in 1876. However this "extinction" was a myth, as documented by Lyndall Ryan in 1991.
Football Federation Tasmania
Soccer was first played in Tasmania during the colonial period, but was never as popular as cricket, and the advent of Australian rules football in the mid-nineteenth century, soon saw that code surpass both rugby and football in popularity within the island colony. The code was generally referred to as British Association Football, to distinguish it from Rugby, and Australian rules, which soon became known locally as 'football' or 'footy'. The term "soccer" originated in England, first appearing in the 1880s as a slang abbreviation of the word "association", often credited to former England captain Charles Wreford-Brown. It is not clear when the term 'soccer' came into common use in Tasmania, but by the early twentieth century it was the more common term.