The World Footy News / Cam Homes World Rankings stirred debate at various stages, including requests for 9-a-side footy to be included. Ultimately the consensus appeared to be to exclude such matches from a "full-scale" football ranking scheme. It was also suggested to create a separate 9-a-side ranking. We shied away from that on several grounds such as the additional effort but primarily on the basis that there is very little international competition in terms of national sides competing in 9-a-side outside of Europe. And even within Europe there has very often been hybrid eligibility rules with plenty of expat Aussies, although in some cases with a handicap system applied.

However, leading up to the 9-a-side 2010 European Cup, run under the auspices of the European Australian Football Association, primary organiser Philip Porublev approached worldfootynews.com to compile a Europe 9-a-side rankings to help with seedings for the tournament.

The European Cup under the EAFA effectively runs on from the previous years' EU Cups that were also organised by Porublev. Although worldfootynews.com was somewhat hesitant to compile the rankings because of the diverse nature of the previous 9s games, we agreed to put it together mostly just rolling in all recent matches regardless of the strict criteria used in our full scale World Rankings. So unlike our World Rankings we did not excluding matches with heavy expat-Aussie influence and ignored concerns about some national sides such as some England sides that appeared to be based on a small number of regional sides and possibly not with the blessing of the national body the BARFL or later AFL Britain.

Nevertheless, the rankings were done to assist the European Cup and were calculated as per the formula for our regular rankings and presented on the European Cup website. Matches started from the 2005 EU Cup and also included the 2007 - 2009 EU Cups, CEAFL 2006 and 2007, the 2009 and 2010 Bute Series between Scotland and Wales, and 4 Nations in 2010 between Croatia, Italy, Czech Republic and Scotland. Obviously there would be some disputed inclusions and additional matches not used due to the hurry.

Since then some additional matches were provided to us, as well as a small number of corrections. Here are the adjusted rankings then, immediately prior to the European Cup.

World Footy News / Cam Homes Australian Football European 9s Rankings

(as at 22nd August 2010)

Rank	Team		Points	Games
1		England	51.50	19
2		Croatia	45.71	19
3		Netherlands	44.21	19
4		Finland	43.54	21
5		Sweden	43.09	15
6		Scotland	42.91	21
7		Israel	42.60	4
8		Germany	41.89	22
9		Belgium	41.43	10
10		Iceland	40.66	4
11		Andorra	39.93	3
12		Italy	38.37	7
13		Catalonia	37.49	15
14		Spain	37.45	8
15		Wales	36.34	4
16		France	33.80	23
17		Czech Republic	31.53	26
18		Austria	27.57	24

And here now are the rankings after the European Cup tournament and two England versus Scotland games, both won by England. The "deltas" are the change in points and ladder positions between the two lists presented here, with positives being an improvement. Note that the qualification of Ireland and Switzerland has pushed many sides down by 1 or 2 spots. The deltas for Ireland and Switzerland are relative to their starting positions on 40 ranking points.

The biggest changes are Croatia (pictured) taking over number 1 spot from England, Ireland immediately jumping up to 4th, and a slide by Scotland (4 spots), Andorra (3 spots) and Catalonia (6 spots).

World Footy News / Cam Homes Australian Football European 9s Rankings

(as at 24th October 2010)

Rank	Team		Points	Games	Pts Delta	Pos Delta
1		Croatia	48.525	23	2.8	1
2		England	48.523	26	-3.0	-1
3		Netherlands	46.97	24	2.8	0
4		Ireland	43.64	4	3.6	new
5		Finland	43.54	21	0.0	-1
6		Sweden	43.09	15	0.0	-1
7		Israel	42.60	4	0.0	0
8		Belgium	41.43	10	0.0	1
9		Germany	41.03	26	-0.9	-1
10		Scotland	40.92	28	-2.0	-4
11		Iceland	40.66	4	0.0	-1
12		Spain	40.63	12	3.2	2
13		Italy	40.38	12	2.0	-1
14		Andorra	39.93	3	0.0	-3
15		Switzerland	37.30	4	-1.3	new
16		Wales	35.02	7	-1.3	-1
17		France	33.37	27	-0.4	-1
18		Czech Republic	33.21	30	1.7	-1
19		Catalonia	33.00	19	-4.5	-6
20		Austria	26.26	27	-1.3	-2

We leave it open to our readers and the European footy community as to whether these rankings are embraced and encouraged going forward. Note that as well as games with expat-Aussies, we also include matches up to and including 12-a-side, and unlike the World Rankings have not kept teams as provisional until they have played a certain number of games.