World Footy News

The world has a lot to thank the city of Liverpool for. This Lancashire city on the Mersey River estuary, some 280 kilometres to the north-west of London has touched people’s lives in some way.

From The Beatles, Cilla Black (originally White!) and the other Mersey Beat bands of the early 1960’s (Gerry and The Pacemakers, Rory Storm and The Hurricanes, The Searchers) to comedians such as Ken Dodd and Jimmy Tarbuck, Doctor Who (or Tom Baker at least), Dr Doolittle (Rex Harrison) or even Lucius Malfoy from the Harry Potter stories (Jason Isaacs), few have been spared a touch of Liverpool.

More notably, the Liverpool F.C is one of the greatest football/soccer clubs the world has seen, after winning 5 Champions Cup then Champions League. Even the RMS Titanic and the Queen Mary ocean liners were registered in the city.

Now, maybe, Australian Rules football will become part of that story of Liverpudlians, with the new Merseyside Saints club being formed. Their newest incarnation sees a return of Australian Rules to the city. The Liverpool Blues existed briefly in 1993, followed by the Liverpool Eagles for a short-lived existence in 2008.

The USAFL-AFL Combine is back. But this year the location has moved from Los Angeles to the IMG Academy in Bradenton, FL. This is the same venue that the AFL held their 10-day high performance training camp for the U18 Academy earlier this year. The Combine will be held in just over a week from April 26-29. This year's updated video promoting the Combine to US athletes can be seen below and has been updated with clips of Combine graduates Jason Holmes at St Kilda and Mason Cox at Collingwood from NAB Challenge matches earlier this year.

                                                                                                            [youtube:6LlFIVhmljQ]

Best known in footy circles as the place where Essendon legend Tim Watson grew up, Dimboola is a small country town in the Wimmera region of Victoria about 330kms west of Melbourne. It is a traditional wheat/sheep farming area.

The town population is around 1600.  Their footy team play in green and gold and are known as the Roos. And now it will be home for this footy season for Terence Brasch. 

At home in Oregon state, USA Brasch like many Americans discovered Aussie rules late at night on TV.  Then he got together with some mates for a kick at OSU, before finding a more regular footy fix with the Porland Steelheads.   Brash is the latest lucky participant in the USAFL's footy exchange program where the league send a promising young American to Australia to further their footballing education.  His application was successful and soon would be on his way to Dimboola.

Sure, most people who follow AFL know that Carlton Blues are the St Kilda Saints third opponent in the Saints’ annual Anzac Day Fixture at Westpac Stadium, Wellington.

But for the first time ever a junior Victorian team will be travelling to Wellington to play against the newly formed AFLNZ Academy Team. The Academy Team have themselves recently returned from a trip to Sydney where they played against a combined Independent Schools’ Allstars team and then the Swans Academy side who were coached by Swans legend Mick O’Loughlin.

The Academy side will be all the better for this experience but they will certainly be coming up against some slick players in the newly formed Peninsula Saints U16 team made up of players from the Frankston and Mornington Football Leagues, a traditional recruiting zone for St Kilda in days of yore.

 

American Footy Star program players Carl Winston III and Torrey Harkness have moved on from VFL club Port Melbourne where they missed the final list cut and have headed to the southern NSW team Temora Kangaroos in the Farrer League. They have also been joined by a third memeber of the program Eddie Ballard who had a preseason run with VFL club Springvale before also heading to the Riverina region township.

 Adding to the International theme at the club is Dominic Joyce who played for the Irish Warriors at IC14. Joyce has moved from nearby club Collingullie where he played the 2014 season.

“We’ve got some North Americans, an Irishmen, we’ve looked outside the box to try and make our league stronger and a better place to be,” Temora President Darryl Harpley told The Daily Advertiser. “(Winston and Harkness) are out here to have a crack at our great game of AFL and if they want to come and learn more at Temora for a season or more than that’s fantastic for them.”

 

During the semi-finals stage of the National Diversity Cup held here in Cairns over the past week, thee Queensland Kickstart team allowed me to sit with them in the coaching bench to watch and hear what goes on “behind the scenes”. It was a rewarding experience, and it went something like this…

 

“One…Two…Three…”. The players are sitting stretching their hammies, quads, calves and counting the hold. You can see in their eyes this drill is the start. It is serious now. They are about to run out for what might be their last match together. A loss and their championships are finished. A win and they live to fight on to the preliminaries.

 

They stand and the warm up continues. Clean hands. Close handpasses. Shouting, screaming, encouraging…getting pumped.

 

 

Eddie Sansbury calls them into line groups – forward, mids, defenders. He tells the forwards to push up field. They are not tall, so get up and get the ball. Make it happen.

The 2015 AFL National Diversity Championships have been completed in Cairns with western Australia being crowned Kickstart champions whilst Queensland made history to win their first cup at any of these championships taking out the All Nations Cup. The following pair of stories are the grand-final summaries for both competitions.

 

National Diversity Championships – All Nations Grand Final

 

The crowd at Cazalys Stadium in Cairns was treated to a tremendous match with the Victoria/Tasmania team – last year’s winners – taking on the well performed Queensland team that had never reached a grand-final at these championships.

 

Victoria/Tasmania made the early running with the breeze in the first half, but again the showers arrived to negate the wind effect. At times soccer became the sport of choice as both teams hacked the ball from end to end in the conditions.

 

A goal to Queensland just on half time levelled the scores and set up an exciting final stanza.

 

 

The Under 15 players in cairns competing in the National Diversity Championships certainly present an amazing spread of heritage and culture. Whilst the Kickstart squad is comprised of players with indigenous Australian backgrounds, the All nations squad has the criteria that one or both parents had to be born overseas (or the player themselves) to qualify.

On that criteria, the spread of multicultural talent is quite astonishing, and a pointer to the future uptake of Australian Rules football.

Throughout a series of interviews conducted at the championships, accompanied by information provided in the official record booklet, the list includes (but is not limited to):

Mexico, Myanmar (Burma), South Korea, Cambodia, Vanuatu, Afghanistan, France, Sudan, Congo, Lebanon, South Africa, Burundi, Cameroon, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Samoa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, England, Egypt.

 

AFL Round 3 kicks off with Collingwood hosting St Kilda at the MCG in Melbourne Friday night.

Once again viewers around the world can access matches live or delayed on a number of TV networks or stream the telecast via subscription to Watchafl.com.au.

The broadcast schedule for this round can be seen below.

 

 

Today marked the end of the round robin preliminary matches for both the Kickstart state indigenous teams as well as the All Nations multicultural teams. The three days to date have seen a scintillating brand of football played in great spirit by the future stars of the AFL. Tomorrow the semi-finals commence to determine the 2015 grand-finalists.

The Kickstart results have seen the Western Australians once again assert their superiority at this Under 15 national level. This is the fifth year of this championship and Western Australia is yet to lose a title. There is little to suggest 2015 will be any different.

After their five matches, Western Australia are undefeated, a game and a half of their nearest rival, Victoria/Tasmania. Northern Territory hold equal third spot with South Australia, but had a higher percentage. Queensland and New South Wales/ACT are in fifth and sixth places respectively.