World Footy News

By Tristan Waldock.

Ariel Steinberg made his AFL debut this weekend for Essendon. He played in Canada at the age of 16 for a season with the Edmonton Australian Rules Football club. He was a big part of the club playing for the men's team and helped coach and umpire women's games helping build the foundation of Canada’s International Cup challenge.

His parents were on a 1 year teacher exchange program to Edmonton in Canada.

Ariel had 7 kicks, 4 handballs and 2 marks for Essendon vs West Coast Eagles.

Ed. We ran a piece on Ariel prior to his drafting in 2010 - see the article here.

The AFL has once again done a wonderful job coordinating around 1000 players and officials from all over the world at the International Cup.  With the upset win of South Africa over Papua New Guinea we also have 4 genuine contenders for the overall championship in the Men's, and in the Women's it looks like the Canadians may have bridged the gap to Ireland, so the race is open there.

However... there's a ticking timebomb that has already caused some damage to the image of the Cup and the AFL and could get worse.

The fixture has major issues.  There's no doubt it's a difficult task trying to meet all the needs of the tournament - flexibility in the number of teams that will turn up, trying to ensure everyone gets a mix of games against the best and the lowest ranked, making sure the top teams have a fair chance to win it, and certainty for the Community Round so that the hosts could prepare for known countries in advance.

But in any sporting competition the key requirement must be that it is as fair as possible.  A primary tool in achieving that is having reasonable seedings (the previous Cup positions making that straight forward) and ensuring a draw that, if matches go according to the seedings, results in the top teams facing off in the semi-finals and grand final.  It also needs to avoid, if possible, teams playing each other more than once, unless they work their way back to a grand final playoff.  This is especially so when players are spending small fortunes to travel around the world wanting to play against countries they've never encountered before or rarely.

The inaugural Dosti Cup was contested on Saturday at Highgate Reserve in Cragieburn, an outer northern suburb of Melbourne. Dosti is the Hindi and Urdu word for Friendship, the spirit in which India and Pakistan would play this game of football.

The home of the Manningham (formerly Bulleen) Cobras at Koonung Reserve in Bulleen was the scene for a Pool of Death (Pool A) match between the Great Britain Bulldogs and the ever improving Fiji Tribe. With the local team in the VAFA, their reserves kicked off the early morning dew and by the time the IC match was ready to go the ground was bathed in weak morning sun glowing through the low clearing cloud and in fine firm condition to allow the players to showcase their wares to the local crowd.

Great Britain sitting 1 and 1 after a first up win against the French followed by a tough and bruising loss against an impressive Nauru. Fiji first up showed a bit going down to the Irish and then had a percentage booster against the hapless Garudas. In the battle to sneak into the Division one 4th place this would be a tough ask – as neither side would give an inch.

With cool and calm conditions prevailing and an overcast sky – the USA Liberty (the ‘B’ team) had a tough task in taking on the inaugural IC women’s champions in Ireland (the Banshees). Perhaps to the chagrin of the ‘A’ team (the Freedom) who would love to take on the Irish – the goal for the Liberty would be more about limiting the damage and seeing if with an ounce of luck and a ton of pluck that they might just sneak a goal. They had the first round bye and on Wednesday had been given a trouncing by the Northern Lights. The Banshees on the other hand undefeated thus far with a tough opener against the debutant Fiji Vonu and a round 2 victory over the other debutant nation Tonga.

Canada put on a slick display of football at Mordialloc on Saturday, winning 20.10 (130) to Sweden no score.

Whilst both sides impressed the enthusiastic local crowd with fast, tough, physical footy, it was the Canadians who entertained with their precision hand and foot skills.

The match potentially could have awarded the Canadians fourth spot after the pool matches and a shot at lifting the International Cup, and the Northwind players knew they wanted to hit the ground running.

Aimee Legault has proudly led her team, the Canada Northern Lights, onto the fields of battle in this year’s International Cup. Aimee has taken the time to share her footy journey with us.

“I first discovered footy in 2009. After a long soccer career I wanted to take a small break from the semi-pro soccer life and I found myself on an open ground with strange looking balls after my sister’s boyfriend, Ronan Shaughnessy, got my sister Margo and myself out to just come for a "kick". The first time I played my hands on a Sherrin, I fell in love. I engulfed myself with learning everything and anything about the sport. I think people were getting annoyed with all of my questions but I just wanted to learn as much as I could.”

“I began playing in late summer of 2009. At this point in time there was only a men's 9 aside league in Montreal, ECAFL (Eastern Canadian Australian football league). Margo and I competed with the men at club level and we also travelled to play in the Ontario men's division 2 league, OAFL (Ontario AFL). Along with our men's provincial team, the Quebec Saints, we played in various 18 aside tournaments with the men. After much recruitment, we finally gathered enough ladies to create our female provincial team, the Montreal Angels. With this team, we would have to travel to Toronto, a six hour drive in order to play against other females.”

The Canadian Northern Lights defeated a much improved Fiji Vonu on a foggy morning at Mulgrave Reserve, hosted by the Eastern Devils for Community Round.

Fiji were winning the early knockouts, with #14 Cathy Bale dominating in the centre, but the Canadians still read the play and took to early lead with #10 Aimee Legault opening up the scoring. The Lights kicked the only three goals of the quarter and kept the Vonu scoreless. To make matters worse #14 Bale received a concussion and had to sit out the rest of the match. Canada led Fiji 3.2.20 to 0.0.0.

Round 3 - International Cup China v Finland by Andrew Sawitsch

Foggy & windy conditions greeted the Finnish & Chinese teams as their buses arrived at Eureka Stadium, North Ballarat.
On paper, This was likely to be a pretty close one, the wide expanses of the oval, combined with the wind, made it seem a certainty.

Match began at 11:10, first quarter saw China doing a lot of the attacking, but unable to capitalise, kicking several attempts at goal out of bounds. In fact the ball spent most of its time this quarter in their forward half, with lots of stoppages & crowded packs. It seemed to go by in a flash & a totally scoreless first quarter seemed a surprise. China's Ruckman GaoPeng was starting to take some marks inside 50 & present as a good target.

  The following was released this evening by the AFL.

 

 

 

 

  THE LADDER

 

POS	TEAM	P	W	L	D	F	A	GD	%	PTS
1	NZ	3	3	0	0	426	13	413	3276.92	12
2	Ireland	3	3	0	0	239	51	188	468.63	12
3	South Africa	3	3	0	0	301	81	220	371.6	12
4	PNG	3	2	1	0	429	65	364	660	8
5	Canada	3	2	1	0	269	52	217	517.31	8
6	Tonga	3	2	1	0	325	103	222	315.53	8
7	Nauru	3	2	1	0	316	102	214	309.8	8
8	Fiji	3	2	1	0	267	95	172	281.05	8
9	USA	3	2	1	0	243	92	151	264.13	8
10	Great Britain	3	1	2	0	152	106	46	143.4	4
11	Pakistan	3	1	2	0	137	225	-88	60.89	4
12	France	3	1	2	0	119	205	-86	58.05	4
13	Sweden	3	1	2	0	91	306	-215	29.74	4
14	Japan	3	1	2	0	79	321	-242	24.61	4
15	China	3	1	2	0	27	334	-307	8.08	4
16	Finland	3	0	3	0	37	296	-259	12.5	0
17	India	3	0	3	0	13	489	-476	2.66	0
18	Indonesia	3	0	3	0	11	545	-534	2.02	0

With the last game of Round 3 completed tonight we can reveal the preliminary finishing positions and which teams go to the top 4, which to Division 1 and the remainder to Division 2.  Please note that we stress at this early stage these ladders are our own calculations and official confirmation is of course by the AFL.

The Women's is straight forward and only goes to finals after 5 rounds (4 matches each).  But the Men started divided into 3 pools, with the complication being that the top 4 that go through to the semi-finals after 3 rounds are the top of each pool and then the next best based on combining all the teams - hence we've also shown a Combined ladder.  That also determines the teams that make what the AFL has called Division 1, i.e. teams 5 - 12, and Division 2, i.e. teams 13 to 18.

Our expectation is that the 4 nations through to the top level men's semi-finals are: Ireland, South Africa, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.