Within three years the first interstate match had been played between Victoria and New South Wales in Melbourne while an affiliation with the Football Association in England was also established that same year.

The early years saw a strong British influence and the code was particularly strong in the mining districts in and around Newcastle, Sydney and Wollongong.

While New South Wales toured New Zealand in 1904, it wasnt until 1922 that Australia played its first international match a 3-1 loss to New Zealand in Dunedin. The first national governing body the Australian Soccer Association had been formed a year earlier.

The tyranny of distance ensured that tours to and from Australia were limited with few international matches played prior to the 1950s.

In 1954 Joe Marston forged a pioneering role for Australian football, and in a precursor for today's many players featuring in European football, Marston became the first Australian to appear in an FA Cup Final in what was the highlight of a six-year career at Preston North End.

Australia's first appearance at a world tournament was the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne where a 2-0 win over Japan was followed by a 4-2 defeat against India.

Post-war migration from Europe helped push the game from a largely amateur status and the late 1950s and early 1960s saw a rapid increase in profile with a number of high-quality European-based players arriving in Australia. This ultimately led to the formation of the Australian Soccer Federation and affiliation to FIFA in 1963.

Australia's first World Cup campaign in 1965 saw the team under prepared for the slick North Koreans who triumphed comfortably and ultimately went on to became arguably the first giant-killers of World Cup football in England the following year.

In 1969 Australia came within a whisker of qualification losing to Israel at the final hurdle, however four years later the Socceroos cleared the final hurdle albeit narrowly. It took a third match to overcome South Korea with Jim Mackay etching his name into Australian sporting folklore with a long-range strike clinching the 1-0 win in neutral Hong Kong. It was however to be the last success for Australia in it's quest to reach football's greatest stage for another 32 years.

1977 saw the establishment of the national competition becoming the first football code in Australia to do so.

Other firsts soon followed with the Australian Women's team playing its debut international match in 1978, while Australia successfully hosted the FIFA World Youth Championship in 1981, and again in 1993.

The status of the Socceroos on the international stage continued to rise with a second-place finish at the 1997 FIFA Confederations Cup followed by third-place at the 2001 edition in Korea/Japan.

There has been a staggering increase in popularity of the game at grassroots level in the last few decades with football widely considered to have more participants than any other sport while the growth in female participation makes it the fastest growing sport for the fairer sex.

At the other end of the scale, the likes of Harry Kewell (Liverpool), Mark Viduka and Mark Schwarzer (Middlesbrough), Tim Cahill (Everton), Jason Culina (PSV Eindhoven), Zeljko Kalac (AC Milan), Marco Bresciano and Vince Grella (Parma) head a list of up to 150 Australians playing football offshore.

2005 was a remarkable year by any measure. On January 1 the governing body changed its name to Football Federation Australia which was soon followed by confirmation of Australia's historic move into the Asian Football Confederation.

The Hyundai A-League Australia's first fully-professional competition was launched in August with high-quality football on display and healthy support from the public and media.

Finally on November 16 the Socceroos achieved what many considered the holy grail of Australian sport with qualification for the FIFA World Cup Germany 2006.