World Footy News

Danish side Farum are well-known for having the biggest juniors competition in Europe, maintaining a strong partnership arrangement with Geelong College and their senior side now reaping the benefits of a large contingent of highly-skilled young Danish players.

The Farum Cup is the annual lightning premiership for the club's junior players, this year held on August 28th with children in the age range 9-12 years playing.

In previous years, the Farum Cup has really just been a matter of all the kids playing in Farum dividing themselves up into arbitrary teams and playing a lightning premiership. While functional, this has always had the negative element of the kids having to play against their friends. This year, for the first time, it was a little more than that.

In April this year, Farum co-founder Ian Hill started coaching a team of kids in his home village of Slagslunde. Lying 12 km west of Farum, Slagslunde is a very small village with no businesses and only a school from which players are recruited. The Slagslunde Tigers (guess who Ian barracks for) also use the school’s soccer oval as their home ground, making it the first regular venue outside Farum being used for junior matches.

At the same time, Farum senior coach Chris Little has moved to the town of Birkerød, just to the east of Farum. The Farum club has taken advantage of this and have established a team of kids from Birkerød – the Demons – who thus far play their games at the Farum ground. With teams from Slagslunde and Birkerød joining Farum, for the first time, the Farum Cup took on a more competitive aura, in that the kids playing in each team did not even know their opponents. The competition was won by Birkerød, defeating the Farum Magpies in the final.

Aside from the Farum Cup, the miniput age group (9-12 years) conduct Denmark's only junior leagues, with the Farum Magpies, Farum Bulldogs and Slagslunde Tigers this year playing a home-and-away season. This season also saw a juniors competition played over nine weeks between the Farum Magpies and Farum Bulldogs, with North Copenhagen also providing a side for one match.

On this coming Saturday, September 17, there will be both a miniput and a junior match played as curtain-raisers to the DAFL Grand Final at Farum between the Farum Cats and South Sweden Saints.