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DAFL Premier League expands to six in 2007

  • Friday, January 05 2007 @ 01:38 am ACDT
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One of Australian Football's oldest international leagues, the Danish AFL, has decided to expand its Premier League to six sides for the coming 2007 season. The new club is the Port Malmö Maulers, from the growing Swedish football scene.

The decision was made at the 2006/07 DAFL Annual General Meeting. The admission of the Maulers to one of Europe's top footy leagues is a meteoric rise for a team that began when the DAFL split up local sides at the end of 2002. This remains a somewhat controversial time in the league's history, with the plan of growing involvement coming to fruition in Sweden but almost the reverse happening in Denmark, ultimately with the Amager Tigers and Århus struggling. For Port Malmö, initially playing in the Scania division, it went on to become a South Sweden Regional League club up against Helsingborg West and Lund. Meanwhile it continued to play in the Scania league by splitting into two sides - Limhamn and GV Malmö. The club now joins Copenhagen, South Sweden, Farum (reigning premiers), North Copenhagen and Jutland in the Premier League. It will be interesting to see if South Sweden can maintain its strong position with Port Malmö now standing on its own. This leaves South Sweden to draw their players from Helsingborg West and Lund.

Hopefully the ever changing DAFL structure is now settling down into the best configuration for the game in the region, at least for now. And of course the other interesting issue for 2007 will be whether Sweden continues to build momentum towards a possible International Cup appearance Down Under in 2008.

In other news, the DAFL website also reported that:

The DAFL Executive Committee is showing near unheard of durability with the EC almost remaining the same. Mark White and Morten Engsbye are staying on as president and vice president respectively, Ingmar Lundquist switches from secretary to treasurer and 2000 president Pàll Finnsson, comes on as secretary. Erik Krolmark is taking a well-earned break from the committee after four years on it - two of them as president at a time when administrative resources were thin on the ground.