World Footy News

Footy returned to its birthplace in India on the 15th of June as Kolkata hosted the first ever ‘ARFAI Bengal State Championship’ in Salt Lake, West Bengal. Six teams with players hailing from Bongaon, Kharda, Hooghly, Howrah and Kolkata fought it out on the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan school ground on a Sunday which witnessed scorching heat, thunderstorm, torrential rain and some cracking Footy action.

The ground in fact hosted the first ever exhibition match of Footy in India back in 2008 with the efforts of present Secretary General of the Australian Rules Football Association of India, Sudip Chakraborty.

The teams were divided into 2 groups of 3 each and played out a round robin format to decide which 2 teams would go on to contest the final. The first group featured the Tigers, Giants and Bombers while the second group matched up the Eagles, Saints and Wolverines against each other. The Eagles team was lucky to play in official West Coast Eagles merchandize provided by the club themselves and facilitated by ARFAI ambassador Helen Mell from Perth.

The tournament also saw the first appearance of a non-Australian brother club in the form of Wolverines who take their name from Wolverhampton Wolverines club in AFL England. After fiercely fought matches in the group stages, the Bombers and the Saints advanced to get a shot at the coveted trophy.

The following press release provided by SIAFL.

Solomon Islands AFL hosted the 2014 Grand Final on Thursday between the White River Demons and the Central Coast Eagles. The stage was set for an exciting game of football between these two powerhouse clubs. Both teams have dominated the 2014 home and away season and were close games in their previous encounters.

The New Zealand women’s team is not yet ready for competition at the International Cup in 2014.

AFL New Zealands’s Mick Coulthard said “The main contributing factor is the age of the girls that we have currently in our system, aged between 14 and 18 years of age that come through our secondary school programmes”.

The AFL today announced the 2014 World Team squad which will compete at the NAB AFL Under 16 Championships on the Gold Coast in July.  AFL Hall of Famer Anthony Koutoufides has been named head coach of the World Team again in 2014.

The AFL this week announced the 2014 Flying Boomerangs squad which will compete at the NAB AFL Under 16 Championships in July on the Gold Coast.

Coached by Eugene Warrior, former Port Adelaide and Norwood (SANFL) player, The Flying Boomerangs squad will participate in Division Three and will take on the World Team, WA North-West and the South Pacific.

The Flying Boomerangs is a personal development and leadership program for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young men aged 14 -15 years-old, supported by the Coles AFL Indigenous Program.

The 2014 SIAFL (Solomon Islands AFL) Grand Final takes place tomorrow afternoon in Honiara. With a season interrupted by a deadly and damaging storm early this year – the season culminates with the White River Demons taking on the Central Coast Eagles.

The match is scheduled for tomorrow (Thursday) – June 26th – at the King George VI field in Honiara. As per the poster below – SIAFL staff will be in attendance from 3pm onwards with the opening bounce at 4pm.

Gab Donnelly has spent a fair bit of time recently lurking around her local post office with large parcels. In her role as treasurer with the Baulkham Hills Hawks juniors in the north west suburbs of Sydney, Gab has been answering the call of their Cairns based “brothers” and sending footy boots and jumpers to all parts of the world to help kids and youth to keep playing our game.

The most recent example is the sending of some club jumpers to the Bodibe club, a city 250 kilometres west of Johannesburg in South Africa. This follows on from their extraordinary gesture of donating a set of 20 jumpers to the Salamanda Port Powers team in Lae, Papua New Guinea, and another donation of a jumper to the North Delta junior club in Vancouver, Canada. They also sent a small set of jumpers to the Pyramid Power club in Cairns to help promote the Brother Clubs Project.

At this rate the club may run out of jumpers before long. But not heart.

A family holiday in June in Vanuatu - a great escape from winter in Melbourne. Staying at the Iririki Island Resort - we had plans for some simple and lazy resort time. However - we also had a Saturday morning date at Kazza Field and two big bags packed with 40+ pairs of footy boots and a couple of shiny new Sherrin match balls.

First though - our recovery day one in Port Vila from a 2am arrival and getting to bed after 4am

It's not uncommon for Australians - especially those south of the Murrumbidgee - to take a winter holiday to sunnier tropical locations and so it was the plan for my family to head to sunny Vanuatu across the first week or so of June. Of course one of my sons would pack a footy. Nothing too strange there. Perhaps what was more strange was a couple of bags containing 40+ pairs of donated footy boots and a couple of plastic wrapped brand new sherrin match footys.

(AFL) Vanuatu here we come! The following is in part tropical paradise travel diary and in part a WFN inspired footy pilgrimage.

In an unfortunate blow to the upcoming International Cup the National women’s team, the PNG Flames will not now be coming to the event. This will be felt throughout the football community in Papua New Guinea (particularly women’s footy) and the game in PNG as a whole.

Just over two weeks ago World Footy News reported the announcement of the PNG Flames squad for the event here. 

However, during the ensuing period the hoped for funding has not been forthcoming. As advised by Ben Drew, AFL Development Officer – Pacific, “the PNG women are no longer attending IC14. Time is tight and raising the required funding is very problematic.” When asked whether or not that decision might be changed, Ben was clear that the decision would not be reversed.

Not all nations can afford to make it to Australia for the International Cups, and it should not be seen as a measure of strength or support of the game if a nation doesn’t get there. There are more factors than just the love of the game, or relative strength of the game, which impact decisions – fiscal considerations arguably the highest of these.

A case in point is the Solomon Islands. According to the SIAFL (Solomon Islands Australian Football League), the desire is certainly there, but not the main mechanism to make it happen – funding.

“Yes, unfortunately we will not be attending the IC14 competition. The biggest barrier came down to a lack of funding and sponsorship. Unfortunately we were not able to secure any corporate backing.”