IC2011 - current country attendance list

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IC2011 - current country attendance list

Monday, February 21 2011 @ 09:09 pm ACDT
Contributed by: Brett Northey
Views: 4,835

24 men's and 6 women's teams still in contention.

Once the AFL's 2011 Australian Football International Cup was announced a large array of countries lined up as possible attendees. Inevitably this has thinned out as some nations decide they do not have the players or fundraising capability to get a large squad down to Australia for two full weeks.

Here is a quick snapshot of who we think are still in contention. Note it is an unofficial list, primarily summarising the results from interviews we've conducted.

For the women's it seems that despite the men from Italy waiting until 2014, the women still plan to make the journey. The list remains Ireland, PNG, USA, Italy, Canada and a combined Multicultural and Indigenous team. With a small number of countries one would think that makes getting all the international sides to IC2011 crucial for a vibrant tournament.

Read on for the men's list.

The men's nominations (previous attendance in brackets) that we believe are still in the running are:

	Nation	Previous ICs attended
1.	PNG	2002, 05, 08
2.	New Zealand	2002, 05, 08
3.	South Africa	2002, 05, 08
4.	Ireland	2002, 05, 08
5.	Nauru	2002, 08
6.	Canada	2002, 05, 08
7.	USA	2002, 05, 08
8.	Japan	2002, 05, 08
9.	Great Britain	2002, 05, 08
10.	Samoa	2002, 05, 08
11.	Denmark	2002, 08
12.	Tonga	2008 (not in main draw)
13.	Sweden	2008
14.	Finland	2008
15.	China	2008
16.	India	2008
17.	Peace Team	2008
18.	Switzerland	(New)
19.	Croatia	(New)
20.	Fiji	(New)
21.	Iceland	(New)
22.	France	(New)
23.	Indonesia	(New)
24.	Multicultural	2008 (not in main draw)

Teams that at one stage were seen as possibilities but are no longer include: Netherlands, Portugal (always highly unlikely), Catalonia, Spain, Germany (although always unlikely given current strategic position), Czech Republic, Timor-Leste (recent withdrawal), Italy (recent withdrawal) and Vanuatu (AFL Asia-Pacific Manager Andrew Cadzow has confirmed to WFN they are concentrating on juniors for now).

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IC2011 - current country attendance list

Authored by: Brett Northey
on Monday, February 21 2011 @ 10:21 pm ACDT

Soon after first publishing the above we were able to confirm that Vanuatu are no longer planning on attending, as they focus on junior development. No surprise as they are one of footy's newest nations.

I'm hopeful that we'll still end up with at least 20 men's teams and the full 6 for women.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

IC2011 - current country attendance list

Authored by: Bruce Parker
on Tuesday, February 22 2011 @ 01:57 am ACDT

my thoughts would be for two men's divisions. First division made of 12 teams, teams that have all played at the international cup and know what it expected of them. Based on WFN rankings a everyone is want to do create 2 pools of 6 teams resulting in a 5 game round robin. Top two crossover semi final whichand then do the same for the next two spots and the bottom two spots. The remain teams make up the second divsion if we are luck enough with another 12 teams great if not 10 or 8 teams still works Most of the teams in this division will be making their 1st or second IC appearance and should be evenly matched.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

IC2011 - current country attendance list

Authored by: Bruce Parker
on Tuesday, February 22 2011 @ 02:00 am ACDT

Meant to add the two divsion 1 pools could look like this

PoolA - PNG, Narua, USA, Denmark, GB, Canada

Pool B - NZ, Ireland, RSA, Samoa, Sweden, Japan

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

IC2011 - current country attendance list

Authored by: Aaron Richard
on Tuesday, February 22 2011 @ 09:24 am ACDT

That looks reasonable to me too. Certainly I don't think you could exclude teams like Canada from Div 1 - for all that on paper they haven't won too many games, they've been pretty unlucky with close losses and were a pretty good team on the park.

On the list, it just has one "Multicultural Team", but do we reckon the AFL will probably get a few onboard to fill the gaps in Division 2 and bring the number of sides up to whatever makes it easiest to schedule? Assuming there might at least be Team Africa and Team Asia from the migrant communities living in Australia, rather than just one side.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

IC2011 - current country attendance list

Authored by: Cam Homes
on Tuesday, February 22 2011 @ 10:15 am ACDT

Two divisions of 12 teams, 2 pools of 6 teams each division. 5 games per team before any crossovers or finals, is anyone else hearing the concerns about the number of games these amatuer players are going to have to play? We are talking about at least 6 games. Spain was forced to forfeit a match in IC 05 when six games per team was played.

Apparently a couple of teams struggled with only 4 games played in EC10(Finland being one, I seem to have read somewhere).

3 divisions, fewer matches per team!!!!! and probably easier programming.

3 divisions, 3 tight contests!!!

One extra trophy, three happy nations rather than two. yippee!

One extra trophy, bummer AFL. :-)

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

IC2011 - current country attendance list

Authored by: Michael Christiansen
on Tuesday, February 22 2011 @ 10:49 am ACDT

SO, Italy Women are still on track while the Italy mens aren't?

Is that confirmed at this point?

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

IC2011 - current country attendance list

Authored by: Aaron Richard
on Tuesday, February 22 2011 @ 11:13 am ACDT

Correct. The Italian women's team will be bringing a smallish squad out from Italy and combining with some Italian-Australian players for the tournament.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

IC2011 - current country attendance list

Authored by: Michael Christiansen
on Tuesday, February 22 2011 @ 11:41 am ACDT

Given the Multicultural side, and given examples such as the domestic Aust multicultural input into the World 18 last year, is there any chance of a 'rest of the world' style team in the IC?? or, is that what the 'multicultural' side is??

Basically, is the Multicultural side soley drawn from new arrivals in Australia?

or, could for example, a nation like Vanuatu or Solomon Islands, who only really have junior activity for now, could some of their first wave or two of junior 'graduates' aspire to joining in the 'Multicultural' squad in the IC??

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

IC2011 - current country attendance list

Authored by: Aaron Richard
on Tuesday, February 22 2011 @ 03:10 pm ACDT

Team Africa and Team Asia were drawn from migrants living in Australia, some recent migrants, some born here. Both teams were organised through the AFL Multicultural programs.

From what I could ascertain, Team Asia seemed to mainly be second generation Vietnamese/Cambodian/Chinese players a la the Southern Dragons.

Team Africa had a greater number of recent migrants, and I think a lower percentage of the squad overall had suburban club footy experience compared to Team Asia.

As far as standard went, South Africa beat Team Africa fairly handily in the warm up match Troy and I saw them play before the IC.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

IC2011 - current country attendance list

Authored by: conyers
on Tuesday, February 22 2011 @ 01:30 pm ACDT

I agree that 7 games is to many, but i also believe that the top 12 teams should be in division 1. My suggestion would be to have 3 groups of 4, for example:

Group 1 - PNG, USA, Great Britain, Sweden

Group 2 - NZ, Nauru,Japan, Denmark

Group 3 - Ireland, South Africa, Canada, Samoa

The top team in each group and the best 2nd place team advance to the semi finals - then final

The next best 4 do the same to determine 5th to 8th place and the same for 9th to 12th

At the end of the day each team plays 5 games and realisticly it should be a very tight contest and in my opinion would be the fairest option that would not upset anyone and still give all 12 teams the chance to not only win the competition but also play against the best.

The 2nd division will then sort it self out depending on the numbers who particiapate and lets face it at this stage they have not shown anyone anything to say that they deserve to be in division 1.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

IC2011 - current country attendance list

Authored by: Brett Northey
on Tuesday, February 22 2011 @ 02:49 pm ACDT

I agree that the top division should be defined and structured to ensure a very fair system, be it 8 or 10 or 12 teams. The lower division should be left until late and be however is left. Not to diminish their tournament, but I don't think it is fair for late withdrawals etc to mess up the competition amongst the top sides. So set that in stone as X teams playing in a certain format, then the remainder organise once the numbers are final.

However, I do like the lightning carnival idea. If the games are short enough then there is no extra load on the teams, and they get to play matches across a wide range of opposition. The top sides will quickly establish themselves. The only risk is upsets amongst the middle ranked sides given that they are shorter games. But at the end of the day something has to be done to divide them.

Hey Cam, you should be a fan of lightning style as it means there will be a lot of crossover between higher and lower ranked sides, which would be great data for our World Rankings. We would have to adjust the points value for shortened matches. IC matches are weighted x2, so maybe shortened IC matches could be worth 0.75 weighting.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

IC2011 - current country attendance list

Authored by: Cam Homes
on Wednesday, February 23 2011 @ 11:37 am ACDT

Brett. More crossovers between regions would all help prove the validity or not of the World Ranking for sure, but remember matches where the rating gap is more than 10.00 points do not make a skerrick of a difference for either team(unless a huge upset by lower ranked team).

Take the Tonga v NZ series last year, after three matches we still don't have any real idea where Tonga fit into the scheme of things other than they are at least 12 or 13 Rating points lower than NZ. Does that at this stage put them on Par with GB, Sweden, Croatia or Peace Team all nations on about 40 points. Cross over matches against those teams would certainly start to tell us where they really fit. Games against PNG would not.

Conyers. I believe in the WFN World Rankings(probably more than Brett at least, Aaron is a little harder to figure) altho I do concede that the paupacity of regular games and the lack of crossover games between regions leave it a little shaky at times and despite the rankings of Sweden and Japan(& Germany) being only a few ranking points below GB and Samoa their positions are probably inflated a bit because of who they have beaten.

Canada's position and ranking is always raised as showning a weakness in the system(their almost regular annual loses to USA pushing them further down than they might should be). But Aaron does concede that even taking that into account and I will point out that when they have played other nations they have only managed wins over Finland, Spain, Japan and SA(before SA's rise in strength) a win over Sweden at last IC when Sweden were over 7Rating points behind Canada.

More importantly thay have lost(some close games) to all of the power teams eg. Ireland, NZ, Samoa, Nauru, GB and USA. so despite our sentimentalism about Canada they just might rather have a go at winning the 2nd Div title and playing against a few more teams where the chances of a win are better.

Likewise Japan have two wins over Spain and a win over India. Their one game of glory was the shock win over Samoa at IC08. Might they just rather have a go at the Div 2 title as well.

Sweden's winning record includes 4 wins over Finland, one over Germany and Croatia. Mustn't forget their win over GB at EC10 tho, so could herald a movement up the ranks into about 9th or 10th, or was that Sweden's moment of glory. MIght they just rather have a go at that Div 2 title.

Point I'm trying to make is that I reckon that 3 Divisions based on as I suggested in an earlier comment would produce much tighter contests in all 3 divisions than a 2 Division competition.

Only problem with 3 Divisions is that the AFL would have to buy 2 new trophies instead of one. That Third Div trophy tho, could become, in time, a prize for new and emerging footy nations to aspire to.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

IC2011 - current country attendance list

Authored by: Bruce Parker
on Thursday, February 24 2011 @ 02:56 pm ACDT

"they just might rather have a go at winning the 2nd Div title and playing against a few more teams where the chances of a win are better."

That reference to Canada leaves me with a big question of why?

Why would anybody want to take that route. As a player to be told that we re going to play in a lower division because we are more likely to in it would be insulting. Using Canada as an example, they have had more than their share of close loses. A 4 or 5 goal lead against Samoa in 2005 at half only to impload in the second half. A close game in 2008 against ireland was the differnce between a top 4 finish. I would be crushed as a player if I were to suddenly be denied the opportunity to compete against those top teams with out the opportunity to at least qualify for a position in the top pool.

Unfortunate for Canada and the USA is that they are geographiclly isolated from the rest of the footy nations in Europe and the South Pacific. They get one game a year against each other. (Always thought it should be 2 games per year between them) Competition is the only way that any nation is going to get stronger. For teams like Canada they need the competition against the top nations to be able to make improvements to their national program. It's those improvements that have had a trickle down effect in the quality of football being played at the club level.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

IC2011 - current country attendance list

Authored by: Brett Northey
on Thursday, February 24 2011 @ 11:18 pm ACDT

I had a feeling Cam's comments on teams wanting to play div 2 may stir some disagreement. I think it depends - some teams clearly will get smashed by the top teams so I think it's realistic to want to play lower, no shame there. But established footy nations like Canada who are very competitive are not going to give up on div 1 lightly. That's why I like a lightning carnival that would sort out the middle sides and the winners amongst them would remain in div 1, at least in my guess at how it might work.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

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