World Footy News

The Norway Trolls and Iceland Ravens met for the first time last weekend, with the Trolls coming out 33-point winners. The home team Ravens put up a fair fight, only being 3 point down at half time, before the Trolls pulled away to win 9.7 (61) to 4.4 (28).

Best on ground was René Damborg Jensen for Norway, who recently returned from competing with the Denmark Vikings at the IC11 in Australia. Runners-up were the Icelandic duo of Magnús Þórarinsson and Viðar Kristinsson, with Norway's Kurt Jensen topping the scoring with 2.5 for the match.

The 16-a-side friendly was a warm up for the Euro Cup in Belfast, as well as the first test match held in Iceland, and was umpired by AFL Europe GM Ben MacCormack.

Icelandic footy stalwart and IceAFL president Friðgeir "Fritz" Ásgeirsson told WFN that the greater experience of the Norwegian team proved the difference on the day, saying "as this was a friendly match, there were no restrictions on the numbers of Australians in the teams so Norway fielded 9 or 10 Australians, while Iceland doesn't really have any. The closest we have is Leifur Bjarnason whose mother is Australian. He did learn the sport in Australia though and is clearly one of Iceland's best players."

Fritz also managed to score the first goal in the match, as he did against Denmark at the 2010 European Championships, earning the honour of being first goalkicker in both Iceland's first home and also first away test matches.

More photos and reports are available via the Oslo Crows website.