World Footy News

The Dubai Heat have again been crowned AFL Middle East Premiers, cementing their position as the most successful Australian Football club in the region. Whilst their competitor in the Grand Final, the Abu Dhabi Falcons, were missing a few star players due to injury and other commitments, ultimately it was a solid effort from the Heat that won them the match.

In the AFL Middle East season proper, each team plays each other once and the Falcons-Heat contest was scheduled for the final round. This match had gone down to the wire; the Heat edging out the Falcons by a slender two points. Whilst the victor remained the same in the Grand Final, the score line didn’t - Dubai this time registering a 54 point victory.

Cameron Hotton kindly provided the following review of the match:

After the nail biter that was the last game of the round, everyone was hoping to see another epic battle, as per last years Grand Final. Yet it wasn’t meant to be with neither squad at full strength.

For the Falcons, one of the joint aussieproperty.com MVP winners, Ben Williams, and another prominent midfielder Brad Foat had returned home for weddings. The RLB Leading Goal Kicker, Marc Peterson broke his wrist in the Falcon’s last encounter with the Heat and was unavailable.

The Heat had a couple of their own players missing due to weddings, with Chris Barrow attending the same wedding as Ben Williams. Nick Pinner had returned to Western Australia. Small forward Gordon Lewicki missed through injury; he tore his hamstring in the previous match. Making matters worse, during the last drill of their last training session, gun midfielder Nathan Seal hurt his hamstring.

Dubai came out of the blocks hard with a point to prove and were up by 5 goals to 1 at the quarter time break. The second quarter saw the same amount of goals kicked by each side with the Heat going into the long break 10 goals to 2.

The second half was a different story with the Falcons lifting and showing a lot of spirit. They outscored the Heat by a point in the third quarter and then drew the last. But the deficit at Half Time was obviously too big an obstacle to overcome and 9 goals was the difference when the final siren sounded – Heat 16.11 (107) def. Abu Dhabi 7.11 (53)

Kelvin Templeton, the 1980 Brownlow Medallist was on hand to award the medal named in his honour to the Best on Ground, James Hope, who had a great game marking everything that came his way and kicking 7 goals, 3 points (which was the opposite to his personal score line in last years Grand Final).

The Australian Ambassador to the UAE, Mr Doug Trappett, then awarded the Runners Up medallions to the Falcons and the Premier’s medallions to the Heat before Coach Jess Murchie and captain Andrew Bereza went up to accept the VB Premiership Cup.

The Heat now have two AFL Middle East VB Premiership Cups in just the league's second season. They have gone though both seasons undefeated.

The Heat now take a few months rest before commencing training in preparation for the Asian Championships in Shanghai in October, where they will defend their title, and aim for a ‘threepeat’.