Welcome to World Footy News Friday, July 04 2025 @ 01:52 pm ACST
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.
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.
The following article, written by Conor Walsh on the AFL website, looks at an upcoming Australian Rules football match between two African countries not usually seen mentioned Australian Rules football circles…until now. The work of Australian teacher, Tom Purcell, and his colleagues is changing that African landscape by degrees. Picture:Zimele.
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.”
A Norwegian team comprising players from the Oslo Crows has crossed the border into neighbouring Sweden and stolen the silverware – the 2014 Sweden Cup.
The annual event was held over the weekend, and the following details from the AFL Sweden website give an indication of what the event entails.
AFL Sweden comes together on neutral ground in Jönköping for a civil war between all the clubs in the country to determine who is the strongest, who is the best, who is the champion of Sweden.
The Swedish Cup is the only time in the year where all of the Aussie Rules players and teams from around the country come together to face off against one another in a festival of footy.
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