World Footy News

Australian football’s involvement in the global scene (at least seriously), has only occurred in the past two decades. We are gradually seeing more exhibition matches played on foreign soil and higher participation levels outside of Australia – the figure of around two thousand players for the United Sates is not huge, but when you consider this was only a few dozen ten years ago, it is impressive growth. Other nations like South Africa have similar levels to the US, but they are expected to skyrocket into the tens of thousands in a few years time.

We're familiar with expat-Aussies trying to convert the locals, but with all these new markets comes an interesting possibility – players learning our great game outside of Australia and outside of their own homeland. WFN sought out all the clubs in the USAFL (and managed to get responses from most of them) about whether on not they had any non-Australians and non-Americans on their list, who they were, and how they had stumbled across our great game.

Responses ranged from the recruits thinking they were turning up to for training with an American football club, to link-ups with Gaelic clubs to word-of-mouth. Three players – Rob Brunton (Baltimore Washington Eagles), Frederik Schulin (Beachside Sharks) and Junji Shibata (Seattle Grizzlies) have actually played football for clubs in two countries, both outside of Australia.

Of course this article only looks at the current players on USAFL club lists. Atlanta has no ‘foreigners’ on their 2007 roster, but has had four since its establishment, two of whom feature strongly in the club’s history. Barry Collins (Irish) and Alp Oran (Canadian) played 93 games between them. Collins was runner-up in the club’s Best and Fairest in 2005 and won the award in 2006. That was no small achievement, making him the first non-Australian to win the award.

What should also prove interesting will be selection time for the 2008 International Cup, and whether players competing for clubs outside their homeland will be considered by squad selectors. This may prove difficult as there are normally several lead up events to a squad being named that a player in the US may not be able to attend, even if they are willing to represent their country in Melbourne.

Below is the list of all the USAFL clubs and players on their lists which fit the above description.

On another note, but still relevant to the concept of players playing football in different countries, one of the USAFL's own - Colin Murphy of the Seattle Grizzlies is currently in Victoria, Australia to improve his footy skills. He is playing with the Sorrento Sharks in the Mornington Peninsula Nepean League.

It is Murphy's second trip down under, his first trip was as an exchange student in Numurkah (Northern Victoria), through Rotary International. Somewhat surprisingly, he only began playing football when he returned to the US, with the Grizzlies. His second trip is to catch up with acquaintances from the last time, whilst improving his footy skills - he played two matches with the Revolution against Canada in Toronto, but wasn't happy with his performance, and saw playing in Australia as his greatest chance of improvement.

The US Footy website recently ran their own story on Murphy.