World Footy News

The first ever AFL National Combine In Russia has been deemed a great success by co-organiser, Slava Belov, president and founder of the St Petersburg Cats. Designed to attract more athletes in the two key AFL cities of St Petersburg and Moscow, the event saw prospective players from a variety of sporting backgrounds (basketball, soccer) try their hand at Australian Rules football.

According to Slava, “it went well, six blokes showed up in every city. We expected 10 at least, so in terms of numbers it's a bit of a disappointment, but five of the six of those participants in St Petersburg went to the [club] training yesterday, so it's a very good result overall.”

“The disciplines were the 20m run, shuttle run, push-ups, kicking 10m/30m, marking 10m/30m and the horizontal standing jump.”
“The winners of combine selection are Pavel Eliseev and Nickolay Vanyaev (St Petersburg) as well as Ivan Belyaev and Evgeniy Nikulin (Moscow).”

The objective was to build both teams in both numbers and athleticism with a view to grow the game further in Russia. Already a healthy competition now exists with a team in both cities, but under a “nines” type format it might be possible to grow to two teams per city in time, creating more opportunities and more matches.

The footage shown was shot by a local St Petersburg television station, further adding to the widening promotion of the game in Russia.