World Footy News

For the last couple of seasons the Collingwood Football Club have held part of their pre-season training at an elite sports facility at high altitude in Flagstaff, Arizona (USA). But with their commitment to a match against Adelaide in Dubai in the Middle East as well as taking an active role in South Africa's Western Cape province, the Magpies have decided they can't reasonably fit too much overseas travel into one pre-season. So they will shift their high altitude camp to Potchefstroom, in South Africa's North-West province, and support development in Cape Town from there, before heading direct to Dubai.

The push into KwaZulu-Natal is also underway, with the launch of the program in Umlazi. More details of both these initiatives follows.

The camp will be in late January with the match against the Crows expected to be on February 12th. Potch is at around 1500m, compared with Flagstaff at 2100m, which reportedly won't make a dramatic difference to the benefit gained. Being a southern hemisphere country, the heat will be on at that time of year, and the journey from Australia will not be as far. Collingwood chief executive Gary Pert said "A critical part of all this is that Collingwood is committed to developing the game in South Africa so we will definitely be doing that while we are over there and doing as much as possible and assisting the AFL with the development work they are doing at the moment".

A more complete review of Collingwood's plans are contained in Pies plan South African preseason.

Meanwhile, footy has launched into its fourth province in the country, with the commencement of AFL South Africa KwaZulu-Natal. The region is probably best known for the city of Durban and the soaring escarpment of Ukhahlamba-Drakensberg Park, but initially the football initiatives will be focussed in the large township of Umlazi, near Durban (see here on a map). The manager of AFL South Africa KZN is Travis Jackson, and the media information said that "DJ Mzo from Gagasi 99.5FM, leading Australian music acts and Bliss ‘n Eso, and MTV cameras shooting a unique documentary will headline the launch of 'Aussie Rules' football and the Footy Wild program in Umlazi". Local orphans were also scheduled to be a part of the Footy Wild program in the province. You can read more about the launch in the official press release (note the actual launch date was Tuesday 17th July).