World Footy News

The 2014 AFL International Cup women’s fixture has been released. Teams will play four round matches and have one bye. After the completion of the round matches teams will be ranked from 1 through to 7 based on their win/loss record and percentage.

The Grand Final will be played between the 2 highest ranked teams at Punt Rd Oval in Richmond on the 23rd of August.

Remaining teams will play off for minor placing’s - 3 v 4 and 5 v 6 with team 7 eliminated.

The USA and Canada will each enter two teams which are completely separate teams. Players representing Canada and USA can only be listed for one team and may not transfer between teams at any stage during IC14. As well as those four teams the Cup will be contested by Ireland, Tonga and Fiji after NZ, PNG and European teams were unable to field sides.

When given 10 minutes to interview the great AFL legend, Kevin Sheedy, as an Essendon supporter the temptation is great to blow it all on talking about the premiership years, the North Melbourne “Marshmallow Incident”, the West Coast “Jacket Waving” or a thousand other personal interests.

In Cairns for this weekend's Gold Coast Suns v Western Bulldogs clash, talk could have drifted to that topic, or the injury to Gary Ablett, or just about anything to do with football in North Queensland, But true to the occasion I was restrained enough to keep the conversation in the domain of international football and was rewarded with a brief but fascinating point of view from one of the most creative and successful people in the history of the AFL.

The initial question was very broad. When asked about his opinion of international footy he responded “It’s great. We have the best game in the world and we have do develop it and encourage it. We have to give it lots of encouragement for it to succeed overseas. It is important for the future of the game that we develop it in markets everywhere.”

The Sweden Elks are gearing up for their third International Cup this year, and although a number of withdrawals from the original list will see them travel with a relatively young squad, a number of familiar faces will be making the trip.

Sweden are hoping to push up the rankings a bit, having finished 12th and 11th in their previous two IC appearances.

National coach Daniel McClaer spoke with WFN about the team's preparations and goals.

The AFL Fiji Club Championships came to an end on a Warm sunny and cloudless day at Albert Park in Suva, Fiji with the Raiwaqa Giants taking out the AFL Fiji Club Championships 2014.

In a lopsided event, the Giants ran away with the game before half-time with a 19.14.128 to 8.11.59 thrashing of heavy favourites Nausori Cats.
In a thrilling and spectacular display of power footy at its tropical best, Bulldog Player of the Match was Juta Vateitei. Cats Player of the Match was Nathan Wesley and a special mention also goes to Finn Murphy for the Giants who took a few brilliant marks and kicked truly finishing the day with 7 goals.

With the Club championships now at a close, attention turns to the final preparations for the International Cup in Melbourne.

Fiji will be looking to jump up into Div 1 this year after winning division 2 in 2011.

Back in 2012 a photo surfaced on social media. It showed a young man wading into a creek to retrieve a footy. The caption read along the lines of “if you kick it in, you get it yourself”. It was a reference to the one and only football belonging to that club.

The club turned out to be the Raiwaqa Bulldogs, the youngest junior Australian Rules football team in Fiji. The photo cannot be found now, lost in the vacuum of social media feeds, but the club just won the 2014 AFL Fiji premiership. An incredible effort, given that less than two years ago their single football was their most valued possession.

The Fiji Times (online) ran a story detailing the events of grand final day:

Having settled into Vanuatu as a tropical island paradise - it's Saturday morning footy time. Normally for me this is Auskick in suburban Melbourne. This Saturday it's a tad bit different; Vanuatu; tropical humidity; land crab holes; and I'll be umpiring today.

This is the third instalment of a Vanuatu travel diary/footy pilgrimage. Part of the objective of this series is to highlight footy on our door step in a country that anyone can justify visiting along with their whole family, or club. In A footy holiday to Vanuatu - Part 1 - boots and footys my family and I arrived with a bit of extra baggage and in A footy holiday to Vanuatu - Part 2 - Kazza field and those pesky crab holes we made our way to Kazza field - spotting familiar goal posts in unfamiliar territory.

The following article by Jennifer Phelan for the AFL.com website details the decision by the Melbourne Demons to commit to an additional two years of playing games in the Northern Territory.

This is exciting news for Territorians just two days out from the final Northern Territory match for 2014 on Saturday between the Melbourne Demons and the Fremantle Dockers.

MELBOURNE'S commitment to the Northern Territory has been extended for at least another two years and four home-and-away games.

The Demons will play at least one game a year at Darwin’s TIO Stadium, with a second at either that venue or Alice Springs' Traeger Park, in 2015 and 2016.

It signals an extension of their existing agreement with the AFL, the Territory's government and AFLNT that has seen them play in the region for the past five years.

Their second game for this season is on Saturday night against Fremantle at TIO Stadium, after their round 11 clash with Port Adelaide at Traeger Park.

To read this article in full, read Dees top up Top End deal on the AFL website.

I am old enough to remember the excitement of the days when an arriving circus was the be-all-and-end-all of excitement. Galloping into our happy but somewhat predictable day to day lives, the travelling roadshows would light up our days. We would admire the elephants, lions, horses and monkeys. We would laugh at the clowns and goggle at the spectacle of the high wire acts. For that brief period in time we were enchanted and lived in another world not usually ours.

Today, at least in my mind, the arrival of an AFL match to my home city, Cairns, has much of that same magic. The big lumbering elephants will be replaced by Will Minson and Zac Smith. The roaring lions, kings of their domain, are replaced by Gary Ablett and Matthew Boyd. The old warhorses are replaced by Griffen, Cooney, Rischitelli and Harbrow and the exciting, agile monkeys are the excitement machines like Dalhaus, Bontempelli, Bennell and O’Meara.

Next week the circus comes to town (no disrespect to the Stardust Circus who is already here). The Gold Coast Suns, our adopted AFL team, takes on the Sons of the ‘Scray – the Western Bulldogs. A modern team created from next to nothing which in just three and a half years is looking a genuine finals prospect (Gold Coast) up against the working class heroes from the western Melbourne suburb of Footscray (Western Bulldogs).

And the “Big Top” is our own Cazaly’s Stadium – surely one of the finest venues in regional Australia. Surrounded by the majesty of the Great Dividing Range, and adjacent Murray Prior Range, Cazalys is an Australian Rules football oasis in a tropical wonderland.

The eyes of the AFL supporting world will be firmly fixed on two northern Australian cities – Darwin and Cairns – in coming weeks as the highest level of the game continues to reach out to audiences across Australia. Fans will be flocking into TIO Stadium in Darwin and Cazalys Stadium in Cairns as the Melbourne Demons, Fremantle Dockers, Gold Coast Suns and Western Bulldogs pack their bags and head north.

Darwin, the capital city of the Northern Territory, will host its one and only premiership match for the season. With a capacity of 14,000, TIO Stadium is sure to have a huge crowd on deck for the game.

A few weeks back the Melbourne Demons hosted the Port Adelaide Power at TIO Traeger Park in Alice Springs (the same venue hosted an NAB Challenge between the Demons and the Geelong Cats in the pre-season). This time it is the relaxed, tropical city of Darwin that gets its chance to shine.

On Saturday 5th July, the Paul Roos coached Demons host last year’s grand finalists, the frugal Ross Lyon coached Fremantle Dockers. For Melbourne the game will be another step in their evolution under Roos from perennial cellar-dwellers into a defence minded team capable of upsetting better placed teams.

LEFT: Darwin's TIO Stadium

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Looks like North Melbourne's American recruit Eric "The Beast" Wallace is making progress in his first season of Aussie Rules, if this footage from the VFL is anything to judge by:

Wallace on instagram