World Footy News

The recent stream of international Australian Football news stories in the Australian and international media continued over the last week. We've pointed you at a lot of them and here is a small sample of some more, ranging from footy in Dubai to South Africa, from China to Ireland, New Zealand and even Australia.

Footy's African dream - An excellent article by Damian Barrett in the Herald Sun, going through the pros and cons of the AFL's South African experiment, and reminding us that there are some high level people in footy who think it's a waste of time. Although there's talk of plans over 10 and 20 years or more, I suspect South Africa will need to provide an AFL draftee within 4 or 5 years to keep the naysayers at bay.

ACT stopover on long march into China - Merryn Sherwood at the Canberra Times discusses a Melbourne Football Club promotional game of Recreational Football outside Australia's Parliament, against politicians and media, and including the Demons' two Chinese trainees, Zhao Yonggen and Zhao Wei.

The world’s best on your doorstep - Aidan Ormond on the AFL website, reports on Chris Connelly's comments that Aussie Rules in Australia is the highest level for the sport, an advantage Aussie fans of footy have over some other sports like basketball and soccer.

Non-stop action on the cards on Saturday - Alaric Gomes for Gulf News speaking to Neil Craig before the Crows-Pies match in Dubai.

International Rules Debate - Setanta Sports debates the pros and cons of reviving International Rules between Australia and Ireland, though interestingly they refer to it as "the oval ball code", showing that the Irish see the game as more of an Aussie sport (the opposite view to that prevalent Down Under), even though the game is played with the Gaelic round ball. They also argue that abandoning the series would stop the flow of players to Australia - the complete opposite argument to what we've put forward here over the past year, which is that the GAA need the senior series to have a relationship with the AFL, thus giving them some leverage.

Aussie Rules Football looks for new horizons - Alaric Gomes talks with Adelaide officials about the Dubai experiment being just the start of overseas games.

A rich life doesn't involve money: O'Brien - Collingwood's Harry O'Brien, of African and Brazilian decent, talks about the Pies' visit to South Africa, his first trip to the continent of his father's birth.

African journey helps O'Brien - More on O'Brien's feelings in Africa.

Pies' schedule exhausting: Malthouse - Collingwood would prefer, after having spent 3 weeks on the road, to next be playing in Albany in regional Western Australia.

More travel tipped for AFL teams - Damian Barrett reports that Ahmed Fahour, the head of National Australia Bank, main sponsor of the AFL's pre-season NAB Cup, would like to see the tournament commence every season outside of Australia. Barrett also reports that the US and Japan are possibilities for 2009, and also mentions New Zealand, a seemingly obvious choice that has been appeared to be on the outer in recent years, despite some good crowds to AFL matches there some years ago.