World Footy News

Sarah Black has reported on the www.afl.com.au website that the Gold Coast Suns have ticked the boxes and locked in arrangements to continue playing matches in North Queensland for 2018 and hopefully beyond. 

In her article, Sarah states that:

GOLD COAST will play home matches for premiership points in both Cairns and Townsville from 2018 onwards. 

 

The deal was struck between the Suns and Tourism and Events Queensland, and will see the club play in Cairns next season, and Townsville in 2019 or 2020.

One of the hallmarks of a great dynasty is to understand that change is inevitable and be able to absorb change and continue forward. It is what has powered great nations and cultures over time and a similar process occurs in sport.

The Dubai Dragons – winner of five out of the past six AFL Middle east premierships – is in that position now. They may be at the end of their great reign, or they may be on a solid plateau set for another year of greatness. Time will tell, but one thing that is certain is they have embraced change over this past off-season. How they respond will determine whether the new season brings more glory or the start of a new phase of rebuilding.

The club is acutely aware of this and is addressing needs. Iain Rowe, president of the Dubai Dragons, offers his insight.

The 2017 USAFL National Championships will be held in San Diego this weekend.  This is the first time San Diego has hosted the tournament and the first time in many years the tournament has been held on the west coast.  Matches will be played throughout the day on Saturday (21st) and Sunday(22nd), but the official proceedings include Friday where a club administrators forum will run through that day and also coaching, umpiring and women's footy clinics will be held ahead of the official registration and welcome on the Friday night.

The match venue is Surf Cup Sports Park, 3885 Via De La Valle,  Del Mar, CA 92014.  The venue will be hosting seven divisions (combined men's and women's) with

This year's tournament will be the biggest in its 21-year history:  53 teams spanning seven divisions, representing nearly forty clubs across the USA and Canada.

The 2017 All-Australian squad has been official but secret since August 28th, but the AFL has now revealed the 17-man team that will compete in the International Rules Series (IRS), which will comprise two test matches, one to be held on November 12th at Adelaide Oval, and the second to be played at Domain Stadium in Perth on the 18th.

To say that this year’s Australian side is star-studded would be an understatement. Prior to this year, this group has collected a combined 34 All-Australian honors, 10 AFL premierships, four Brownlow Medals, one Norm Smith Medal, five AFLPA MVP awards, and nine AFL Rising Star nominations. In addition, Eddie Betts, Paddy Ryder, Chad Wingard, and Shaun Burgoyne have made a combined eight appearances with the Indigenous All-Stars.

A collection of young amateur footballers from Melbourne are getting a chance to take footy to the Emerald Isle.

A representative squad comprised of youngsters from the Victorian Amateur Football Association (VAFA) is currently touring Ireland and will be competing against Gaelic footballers from the Donaghmore Ashbourne GAA in an international rules test match this Friday, October 13th. These two teams have participated against each other in international rules matches before, with both sides earning victories.

 

 

AFL Victoria today announced the new clubs entering the Swisse Wellness VFL Women’s competition for 2018 (the third season of the competition since the VWFL was dissolved).

Six VFL Women’s licences have this week been granted for the 2018 season, with Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Richmond, St Kilda (AFL) and Williamstown to join the competition next year, while the VU Western Spurs will be known as the Western Bulldogs and will wear the red, white and blue in a strengthening of the two clubs’ relationship.

 

Seaford will transfer its licence to St Kilda (AFL), with the Saints to partner with the Frankston Football Club to form the Southern Saints, while Casey Demons will also form part of the expanded competition after Cranbourne transferred its licence to Casey in August.

Drive across Russia. Go on, I dare you! Its size is almost incomprehensible. Suggest you pack a sandwich. It is the largest country in the world and according to Wikipedia it covers one eighth of the habitable land mass of the earth. It cover over 17 million square kilometres. If this doesn’t yet have your attention as to its staggering size, try this. To travel from, say, St Petersburg in the west to Vladivostok in the east is not much short of 10 000 kilometres. Recommend you leave early.

The nation is almost too enormous to describe. Yet, if we change the context to Australian Rules football, they are but a mere minnow in the footy pond. Many footy nations are still described as being in their infancy. Russian footy is still in the crib.

That is what makes last weekend’s first Euro Cup win since 2011 for the Russian Czars so wonderful. A team representing a microscopic level of interest within a nation has just planted the seed for something bigger to grow. One win might not be seen as a big deal, but to those who have been developing the game in Russia that win was the equivalent of crossing the Himalayas.

The tables have finally turned in European Australian Football with both the men's and women's England teams not only claiming but dominating the Euro Cup 2017.

The most pleasing thing about both squads is that there were a number of debutants, players who have never pulled on the England guernsey before. Ruckwoman Allanah Blount's involvement in IC17 had a huge impact on her development despite the 23 year old only picking up the Sherrin in March this year.
 

The new 2017/18 NTFL season got off to a flying start in Darwin this weekend. After a winter sojourn where many players travel across the nation to play footy in other state leagues and metropolitan or country competitions, they return to Darwin for Australia’s number one summer footy competition.

It was set to be a very interesting season with the AFLNT controlling body making significant changes to the rules of the game by restricting the amount of fly-in/fly-out players on team lists in the hope of evening the competition. Time will tell if the initiative works and helps to generate more opportunity for local youth, but the Round One results were, by and large, a mixture.

In arguably the match of the round, last year’s premiers, St Marys, came up against last year’s big improvers – Nightcliff Tigers. It was the Tigers, however, running away to an 80-point win to exact a little revenge for missing last year’s grand final.

During the 2009 AFL Middle East season, the Bahrain Blues first entered the fields of footy battle when they played in the Dubai 9’s tournament. By later that year the nation’s Australian Rules football team was a part of the AFL Middle East competition proper. Big things were possible and the sky was the limit.

Then came the “Arab Spring”, a period of political turmoil across much of the Middle East and northern Africa, which saw massive protests and clashes across many nations. Bahrain itself was a part of this. The island nation off the coast of Saudi Arabia saw clashes and the unsettled nature of the events between 2010 and 2012 (predominantly 2011 in Bahrain) saw the landscape change for footy as many ex-pats once involved in creating the Blues left the nation and Australian Rules football, as with other endeavours, stalled.

English fans will have partied well into the night in Bordeaux after the nation took out the prestigious Euro Cup titles for both the men’s and women’s competitions. It will be remembered as a landmark day for English Australian Rules football as the years of hard work behind the scenes and on the training tracks resulted in a memorable result for the nation.

A moment should be set aside for Irish teams, both the men’s Warriors and women’s Banshees going down in the finals to the England teams. They Irish were brave, but the results in each final showed the English a long way ahead on the scoreboards, suggesting luck had little to do with results.

Whilst the victors quite rightfully will enjoy their tournament and take away fond memories, some of the lesser lights also stood out in a tournament, which continued to bring great opportunity to participating nations.

It was their destiny. The Multiplex Bulls entered 2016/17 confident that it would be their season. It would be their breakthrough premiership – their reward after having already felt the pain of four premiership defeats in previous seasons. Admittedly, one of those was a pre-season cup in their inaugural season, but they still hurt.

Last season it was the Bulls first into the Grand Final and they waited as the Dubai Dragons won their way into the final clash of the year. However, this year it would be the Bulls – finally.

It was not. They went down by just a goal. Not only were the Bull’s hearts broken again, but the margin was further salt into raw wounds…so close and yet so far.

The Bulls now have a new season ahead of them, but acknowledge how much the club hurts. According to the club, “the Bulls were gutted last year to not take the prize, but we are looking forward to another strong and successful season. We have been training in some pretty awful summer conditions since August.”