Thank you Kevin. What particularly irritates me is when people will contrast them by the wrong names, as in e.g. "Did you play rugby or football at your school?" Makes my blood run cold. That is surely why the distinction, admittedly perhaps a bit pedantic at this time of day with regard to popular usage, should be preserved. The fact, achm, that you suffer from this mnemonic mental ref to American usage, is purely your own problem, and should not be allowed to override the overall public interest.

≈M≈

I think it worth pointing out also, at risk of maintaining this drift further than it perhaps should persist, that in the public school novels of late·19-early·20C by the likes of Talbot Baines Reid and Alec Waugh, 'football' tout-simple invariably meant Rugby football.