World Footy News

The writers at worldfootynews.com have worked their way through the draw for the 2008 Australian Football International Cup (we'd better also call it the AFL International Cup to make sure we get search hits - people seem to be regularly punching that in to search engines).

Putting together the final rankings of the seven writers who contributed, we've come up with the average placings and thus our consolidated tip as to the ranks come the end of the tournament.

Probably no major surprises, but read on to see how we ranked the sides.

Top spot was a close run race, with New Zealand just ahead of Papua New Guinea (this author had them reversed, but expects them both to be in the decider with a very tight match). Perhaps boringly we ranked the US third and Ireland 4th - the same as they finished in IC05. Canada are tipped to make some gains, as are South Africa, though not at much as some may expect. Denmark are predicted to outperform the new teams, but not be the strong side they were when they competed back in 2002.

Here's the consolidated "wisdom" of worldfootynews.com:

1 New Zealand
2 PNG
3 USA
4 Ireland
5 Canada
6 South Africa
7 Great Britain
8 Denmark
9 Samoa
10 Nauru
11 Japan
12 Sweden
13 Finland
14 Peres Peace Team
15 China
16 India

This is all done as some good fun. The truth is that the "form guide" on many of these nations is very thin, with few internationals played each year. However it does seem almost certain that the winners will come from the top four ranked sides, unless a dark horse bolts from the blue - South Africa being the obvious team that should have improved but no one knows by how much. With plenty of Nauru's players getting experience in local Victorian footy, don't be surprised if they cause some upsets too.