World Footy News

2011 sees the inaugural Women's International Cup in Australian Football. Unfortunately Italy appears to have unexpectedly decided they will not be attending, which has thrown some uncertainty into the schedule.

The AFL has said that given there is no women's International Cup history, rankings were random and drawn out of a hat.

Final teams for IC11 Women’s and rankings are:

1. PNG
2. Australia *
3. Canada
4. Ireland
5. USA

* Australian Indigenous/Multicultural team
Although a tentative draw is in place for the women's competition, uncertainty remains so we will hold off on publishing. We can say that the first round is Monday August 15th at Blacktown in Sydney to be followed by a women's launch function that evening.

The AFL's International Development Manager Tony Woods issued a memo with the following options:

Option 1:
In order to carry a bye for each team and have an opportunity on the final Friday to play off for a Grand Final, we will need to schedule another game. In this scenario the only option allowing for maximum recovery within the schedule is to play round 2 at 12pm on Wednesday August 17 and Round 3 at 6pm on Thursday August 18. Round 4 and 5 will be played as normal and the 6th game (Grand Final and 3 v 4) will be played on Friday August 26 with the 5th placed team sitting out.

Option 2:
The schedule and draw remains as is and the final placing is determined following completion of the 5th round on Friday with no feature Grand Final.

We'll publish the final draw as soon as we know it.