World Footy News

The current AZAFL season has been another successful one already and we are only in May. Some US teams are just running out for their first kick. The six team AZAFL have completed their ten round home and away season, finals and grand final and managed to throw their AZAFL World Invitational Metro Footy Championship Tournament in the mix back in February.

The standout team this year have been the Chandler Outlaws. Their nearest rival the Tombstone Marshalls not quite able to bridge the gap between them in the home and away season. Sitting back in third and fourth places at the end of the home and away season were the ASU Sun Devils and the Scottsdale Dingos. These four teams played off on April 22 with an upset win, with ASU defeating Tombstone, and things going more to script with Chandler taking care of Scottsdale to advance to the Grand Final on April 29th. Tucson and Phoenix were just out of contention for the playoffs missing out by percentage in what was a fairly even season for the bottom four sides.

The Grand Final was played in warm sunny conditions and the Outlaws got out to an early lead. While many expected them to go on with things, the Sun Devils had other ideas and slowly worked their way back into the game with tight close checking footy, with the game anyone’s at three quarter time. The Outlaws held onto a slender four point lead. But it was as if the Outlaws had been saving themselves for the last quarter as they held ASU scoreless and piled on four goals to take the premiership by thirty points with strong running footy that had seen them undefeated for the season. The Outlaws were premiers and champions, this being their third flag in five years.

While the intensity of footy in terms of numbers of games may now ease off as they head into the hot Arizona summer, the season continues on, with the Arizona Hawks squad preparing themselves playing 18 a side intra-club games to select teams to play in the Western Regional Tournaments this year (recently revealed to be June 17 and 18 hosted in California by the SCAFL and a later tournament to be announced at a later date). Of course their eye is on the big prize at the US National Championships held just down the road in Las Vegas in October.

There have been a large number of new players to the game in Arizona this year and an innovation for the AZAFL this year has been the keeping of official stats for all games, that’s stats for all players, which would seem to be a bit of a mammoth undertaking. One of the team coordinating these stats is Kent Blasingame, he and others record live onto tape and then carefully transcribe the stats after the game. The stats are then available for all to see on their website. Although official stats are kept at the top-level leagues in Australia it is an innovation that far exceeds what most competitions would carry out. It is probably no surprise that Blasingame is a huge baseball fan, his father played pro baseball in Japan, baseball being a game where statistics are almost as much a part of the game as the bat and ball.

Kent revealed the value of putting this together every week “We decided in AZ, to keep the interest and enthusiasm alive for younger players new to the game. It also encourages players other than offensive types who score goals. Now, players who are ruckmen, half backs and full backs ask when the week's stats are going up. And that is what we want here is energy for the game. I would think it would be a great way to scout for the national team if one was a coach.”