World Footy News

Hannah Thomson, writing for SBS, has provided an excellent account of the growth of our Australian game in Scotland. From the McCracken influence at Essendon to the Scottish football scene today, Hannah examines the growth through the eyes of those currently playing or involved in Australian Rules football in Scotland.

When you think of Scottish sports, AFL won’t be the first thing that comes to mind.  However, when Aussie rules first began in the mid 1850’s, the Scots were more involved than you imagine. When John McCracken and his two sons, originally from Girvan in the West of Scotland, moved to their new home in Melbourne in 1871 they established the Essendon Football Club.

Now, more than 140 years later, the game is beginning to flourish in the McCracken’s ancestral home.

St Kilda Football Club has unveiled its specially designed 2014 Anzac Day guernsey in a ceremony at Te Papa Museum in Wellington.

With new recruit, and Auckland born midfielder, Shane Savage as the model the maori heritage shone through both inside and outside the jumper!

The guernsey will be worn by the Saints players in the second annual AFL match played at Westpac Stadium when they take on the Brisbane Lions on April 25, 2014.

The contemporary Maori design, created by designers at Open Lab, Massey University, emphasises the links between New Zealand and Australia through the Anzac journey, using authentic motifs.

The Eastern Suburbs Bulldogs are again Wellington’s premier team after a convincing win over the North City Demons. On a sunny day in Wellington the Demons, played in a determined fashion, but were eventually outrun by the Bulldogs as the match progressed.

The Bulldogs were undefeated throughout the season but the Demons themselves are a good news story for 2013 after the team was in recess for 2012 and a total re-build was required.

In a season where the other two teams, Hutt Valley Eagles and Wellington City Saints, ran out of commitment about 2/3 of the way through it was fantastic that these two teams could carry on and have a game to finish the year worthy of their efforts throughout in building and maintaining their teams for the season.

This year a carnival of football will headline the return of Australia’s game as the 2014 NAB Challenge rolls into every Australian state and territory with 18 games in 18 days.

The full international broadcast schedule for Feb 17th to 23rd can be seen below.

Three kicks, four handballs and five tackles. Not a big return on debut for Kurt Heatherley with the Hawks in tonights NAB Challenge match against an inexperienced Brisbane side that did not trouble the Hawthorn defenders too much. But commentators and the Hawthorn coach agreed that Heatherley impressed on his first outing with good solid defending and showing some footy smarts.  Hawks fans will have also been pleased by the way he hit the contest hard.

Regular defenders such as Lake, Gibson, Hodge, Stratton, Schoenmakers and Birchall were all missing from the Hawks backline tonight and that list is a good reminder of how far away Heatherley probably is from getting a senior game during the 2014 season. But it is another important step for the kid who first learnt the Aussie game in NZ towards being ready for a senior debut when the time comes.

The following is a press release from the AFL detailing the new joint initiative between the AFL and Rio Tinto to promote opportunities for indigenous players, culminating in a match which will be the prelude to the “Dreamtime at the G” clash later this year.

The AFL and Rio Tinto Footy Means Business program is holding its first training camp in Perth this week, February 10 - 15, led by coaches Aaron Davey and David Rodan.

Each year the Footy Means Business program provides 50 Indigenous men, aged 18 to 24-year-old, with exposure to elite AFL programs and training, along with networking opportunities in corporate environments over two training camps.

This year a carnival of football will headline the return of Australia’s game as the 2014 NAB Challenge rolls into every Australian state and territory with 18 games in 18 days.

The 2014 NAB Challenge will kickoff  with Wednesday’s opening match in Geelong where the Cats will host Collingwood at Simonds Stadium (7.10pm local time), the first of 18 consecutive matches to be played over the next three weeks.

The full international broadcast schedule can be seen below.

Hawthorn will field a strong team when it takes on Brisbane Lions at Etihad Stadium on Thursday night in the NAB Challenge. Of the 29 player squad, 13 premiership players from 2013 have been selected.

New Zealand rookie Kurt Heatherley will join his fellow 2013 recruits Ben McEvoy, Ben Ross and Billy Hartung in their first game in the brown and gold. Heatherley was identified as a footballing talent in NZ and played for junior NZ and Oceania/South Pacific representative teams before being awarded an International Scholarship by Hawthorn.

After relocating to Melbourne to complete his secondary schooling and playing school football and with Sandringham in the TAC Cup, Hawthorn were able to officially add Heatherley to their playing list at the end of 2013. Heatherley has spent plenty of time at the club over the past few years and now will get to join his clubmates in action in this first round of warmup matches leading into the 2014 season.

Tomislav Vlaović is the current president of the newly founded Aussie Rules club, the Slavonski Brod Tigers, from Croatia. Hot on the heels of the current drive in Croatia to have a full sized field built at the Zagreb University, the Tigers represent another compelling piece of evidence that Croatian footy is growing.

Following is Tomislav’s story about his own background and that of the Slavonski Brod Tigers, who will lock horns with the Zagreb Hawks, Zaprude Giants, Velika Gorika Dockers and their Austrian brothers the Styrian DownUnderDogs.

 “I was born and raised in Melbourne until the age of 14 when my family and I permanently moved to Croatia to live. I always preferred [Australian Rules]footy to soccer because simply footy is more dynamic and attractive to play. Where every player is ready to cross that line of no return, where there are no calculations. Where a Collingwood supporter can sit next to a Carlton supporter and not panic. That's why I love this game.”

The lads from the Great Britain Bulldogs got together with some of the players from Wasps rugby club to talk about the differences and similarities of their chosen sports. And former WFN scribe Adam Bennett gets to shows off his skills.

Mickey Randall writes for The Footy Almanac - a great piece written around the modern international world of Auskick on Australia day with the Singapore Sharks and taking Mickey back to his own junior days in Kapunda, South Australia.

Sometimes we can look at a sport or activity we enjoy and wonder why it doesn’t just automatically catch on and happen elsewhere. In the case of Australian Rules football, many of us see the glam and glitter of the game on television, or take in the atmosphere of a game by being there in the stands and think it’s all too easy.

But the reality is that it takes incredible amounts of money, time, people, resources and drive to make the game grow, whether that be at the MCG, the local club, or in remote outposts of the game in places like South Africa. This story looks at an account of how difficult it has been to fly the Australian Rules flag in a village called Bodibe.

It is almost ten years since Victorian club, the Hampton Rovers, donated a set of their footy jumpers to the Bodibe club. The following is an extract of an account of that event, taken from the Hampton Rovers website: