World Footy News

Afl Europe has proudly announced that a record 21 teams are confirmed for the 2014 Axios Euro Cup to be held in London on October 4th at the London Irish Rugby Club. With confirmations now in from competing clubs, the day will feature 16 men’s teams and 5 women’s teams.

This is a huge increase on the 14 teams which attended last year’s event in Bordeaux, France.

For the 2014 event the men’s teams from England, Austria, Croatia, Spain, Norway, Italy, Ireland, France, Catalunya and the European Crusaders are returning to re-engage in battle from last year. Their numbers are boosted with the inclusion of the Scottish Clansmen, Flying Dutchmen from the Netherlands, The German Black Eagles, Welsh Dragons, Swedish Elks and Denmark Vikings.

The new 2014/15 season of the CNFA competition in France is almost here with the season to kick off in fine style. The Perpignan Tigers have re-joined the Championship League and they open the season with their clash against the Cergy Pontoise Coyotes at their home ground on October 11th.

The inclusion of Perpignan for the new season will see eight teams competing each round, cutting out the need for a bye, and showing the growth of the game in France as Perpignan have generated enough local interest to be a viable team again.

The other clubs going around again this season ate the already mentioned Coyotes as well as reigning premiers the Toulouse Hawks, their grand final opponents Paris Cockerels, the Bordeaux Bombers, Strasbourg Kangaroos, Montpellier Fire Sharks and the Lyon based ALFA Lions.

Elliott Takolu (left) had held a dream for a very long time. Having fallen in love with the game of Australian Rules football back in his home city of Lae in Papua New Guinea, Elliott always wanted to get to Australia and try his luck.

After many failed attempts to get to Australia, usually through visa issues, Elliott finally made it this year. Even though he arrived well into the new season, he joined AFL Cairns club, the South Cairns Cutters. Living with a host family, Lance and Sue Dixon, Elliott finally played out his dream.

Cutters’ president Steven Begg was high in praise for Elliott’s commitment to the game and the club, as well acknowledging him as a fine young man. Steven was impressed in equal parts by Elliott’s attitude and application to his footy as well as his work off the field helping club and family in any way he could. It is this combination of ground-breaker and role model which Elliott will take back to Lae and use to inspire others to make the jump.

Port Adelaide tonight selected South Australia's Johann Wagner as the inaugural winner of Fox8’s ‘The Recruit’, guaranteeing him a place on the club’s rookie list for the 2015 Toyota AFL Premiership Season as a Category B player.

The Australian Pay TV channel Fox8 show had two potential international recruits Padraig Lucey (who featured for Ireland at IC14) and Mark Cisco (an Ameican who had previously tested at AFL combines) who performed well but did not make the final three.  

Wagner was selected at a special NAB AFL Draft meeting held in Melbourne tonight.

The winner was determined following a voting process involving all clubs ranking the final three Recruits - Queensland’s Bradie Foster, Victoria’s Chris Moreland and Wagner.

Left: Padraig Lucey.

Sydney host North Melbourne and Hawthorn play Port Adelaide at the MCG in this week's Preliminary finals with the winners headed for the Grand Final and the losers heading to the offseason.

The international broadcast details for both matches and highlights packages can be seen below.

Irish Australian Rules footballer Padraig Lucey has been snapped up by Geelong for two years as an international rookie. As part of the Ireland Warriors men’s team at this year’s International Cup in Melbourne last month, Padraig has managed to catch the attention of recruiters in a couple of ways.

Not only has he been a contestant on the FOX 8 television show The Recruit, he has also come from a successful International Cup performance for Ireland. In his five games, Padraig booted 14 goals, including impressive bags of five against highly fancied Nauru and a huge six goals against France. He also featured amongst the best players for Ireland in many matches.

According to the Herald Sun article by Adam Baldwin, “Geelong’s ruck crisis is set to see it turn to an Irishman who was last week delisted from a reality television series.

Gold Coast Suns’ captain Gary Ablett tonight became the first man in the game’s history to be selected as an All Australian in eight consecutive seasons when the Virgin Australia 2014 AFL All Australian Team was named in Melbourne tonight.

 

Ablett, who electrified the competition averaging 32 possessions a game before a season-ending shoulder injury in round 16, was named as first rover and has now equalled his father’s record of eight All Australian selections.

 

Ablett’s former Geelong Cats’ teammate Joel Selwood was named as All Australian captain for the second consecutive year – his fourth selection overall – while St Kilda skipper Nick Riewoldt was named at centre half-forward and as vice-captain for the team of the year.

 

The lead up to this season’s AFL Cairns finals series has been dogged by a furore behind the scenes which has sadly shifted the attention away somewhat from this weekend’s AFL Cairns Grand Final between Cairns Saints and Port Douglas.

During the season local club, Manunda Hawks, recruited a former Port Douglas player Sam Boxsell. The player was being investigated and had been charged with a crime which has since been thrown out of court. However, his time at Port Douglas was dogged by this and other issues including a club ban for altercations with team mates.

In short, when Manunda Hawks were due to play Port Douglas in Round 17, people using social media threatened violence should the player in question return to Port Douglas, leading to Manunda Hawks taking the drastic step of forfeiting the match rather than risk the possibility of the threats being carried out. The Manunda Hawks club president, Richard Martin, says the club was enacting “due diligence” in giving the player another chance to play football as well as duty of care to take steps to avoid further issues.

worldfootynews.com is pleased to announce the winner of our IC14 tipping competition: Seth McElvaney (USAFL Umpire's Director, Founder of the North Carolina Tigers).

Remarkably Seth was runner-up in 2011, proving his good form was no fluke.

In 2011 we asked tipsters to predict the result of each round, whereas this time we were pushed for time and launched our competition very late and simply asked for final ladders for the men's and women's competition.  Final ladders were compared with the true finishing positions and points calculated for each position away the tipster was.  All these "errors" were then summed and divided by the number of teams to give an average miss error.

E.g. if there had been 4 teams only: PNG (1), Ireland (2), NZ (3), SA (4) and they finished in that order, but a tipster had placed them as Ireland (1), NZ (2), PNG (3), SA (4) then they would have had an error in each position of 1, 1, 2, 0 respectively, for a total of 4 and average of 1.0.  The lower the error the better.

Our winner Seth had an average error across the 18 men's and 7 women's teams of just 1.44.  That was better even than the primary author of our world rankings, Cam Homes (ineligible) on 1.60.  The worst entry (we won't name and shame) was 2.56.  Seth even listed the top 3 in both the men's and women's exactly right.

Congratulations to Seth, we'll be contacting you shortly to arrange a football related prize up to the value of $100.

Geelong vs North Melbourne and Fremantle vs Port Adelaide Semi-finals are on this week with the winners headed for the Preliminary finals and the losers heading to the offseason.

The international broadcast details for both matches and highlights packages can be seen below.

As most competitions across Australia reach their finals time and begin to wind down for 2014, the people of the Top End are just waking to the pre-dawn of their new 2014/15 season. Whilst many are unaware of the “off-season” competition based in Darwin, the locals certainly are well aware and don’t see it as the “off-season” at all. To them it is GAME ON.

And far from being a small local competition, the NTFL boasts a very high standard, and can we watched via live streams right throughout their season. When a competition boasts a history of names such as Rioli, Long, Motlop and Davey you can be sure the quality will be electric.

The new season starts in just over three weeks, with a first up rematch of last season’s premiers, St Mary’s and Wanderers, to get the ball rolling in a triple header at Darwin’s TIO Stadium. That match will be followed by Southern Districts against Tiwi Bombers and Palmerston Magpies taking on Waratah. Nightcliff will take on the Buffaloes on the Sunday.

It's unusual to see AFL Europe make the mainstream news in Australia but unfortunately it has done so in controversial circumstances which may have an impact on all international AFL affiliates.

The ABC has reported that the AFL-affiliated body has signed a sponsorship deal with Royal Brunei Airlines, including to fly players from Europe to Australia.  Unfortunately the airline is state-owned and Brunei is the subject of a boycott campaign in response to harsh new laws that include the death penalty by stoning for gay sex and adultery.

The AFL has now stated that:

"These laws are counter to everything the AFL stands for in regards to inclusion and diversity".

"In conjunction with AFL Europe, we are currently reassessing the appropriateness of the sponsorship arrangement and also the broader issue of the AFL's oversight of potential sponsorship deals that are put to affiliate organisations overseas."

Although AFL Europe is an independent body the AFL will presumably have a strong influence on it through their financial support, despite that being relatively modest.