World Footy News

Interview and article courtesy of Scott Patching

In what is surely a rare, if not unique, dual achievement for an international player in Australia, Great Britain’s Will Worthington has captained a premiership side, and claimed the team’s best and fairest award. Worthington led Onkaparinga Valley Bulldogs to victory in South Australia’s Hills Central Division B grade on the 14th of September, before taking out the highest individual prize, and the Players MVP, the following weekend.

The stories of people from overseas that come to Australia to play footy are often intriguing as we struggle to imagine our game being played anywhere else. Will’s is no different. 9-a-side footy on rugby fields in the south of England must seem a distant memory when playing in front of a few thousand people at a country Grand Final. In between there have been the lows of injury and the highs of national representation.

It is three thousand odd kilometres between Punjab in north India to Kerala far down south. It’s another 2000 kilometres between Gujarat far west and West Bengal on the eastern borders. Massive distance the figures suggest and the present Secretary General of the Australian Rules Football Association of India, Sudip Chakraborty, has travelled the length and breadth of the nation repeatedly for the past 12 months just for footy. Starting from the national championships in Kerala in 2012 and set to culminate in another championship in Goa this November, this twelve months has been one hell of a ride for this footy vagabond.  

A cricket fanatic and open to new ventures, Sudip jumped on the footy bandwagon in 2008 and before long he had become an integral part of the sporting activities in the country. By the end of 2011, Sudip had already represented his country in two International Cups, and as the days rolled on, what started as an exploration, turned into a vision and a stubborn will to make his dream come true.

The full AFL fixture for 2014 can be seen below.

The AFL today released the fixture for the 2014 Toyota AFL Premiership Season, whichwill be highlighted by an historic return for AFL football to one of Australia’s great sporting venues, and a welcome to a new ground and regional city hosting its first-ever match for premiership points.

AFL Deputy Chief Executive Gillon McLachlan and AFL General Manager – Broadcasting, Scheduling and Major Projects Simon Lethlean released the fixture today,which sees the inclusion of Adelaide Oval as a regular venue for Australia’s only indigenous game as one of the highpoints for the national competition.

In this final instalment of the interviews arranged by the Bordeaux Bombers and the CNFA after the recent tournament in France, the focus is on women’s footy. Vanessa Degrave, a player for the French team – the Inattendues – looks at how she became involved in Australian Rules football – in France.

 In a tremendous coup for Australian Rules football in Europe, and the game in general, Prince Charles has become Patron of AFL Europe. The story below, kindly shared with us by AFL Europe, details this landmark appointment. 

 When he was a student at Timbertop (a campus of Geelong Grammar School) near Mansfield, north-east of Melbourne, in 1966, he is unlikely to have escaped exposure to Australian Rules football. He was a student at the campus from January to August of that year: the same year that St Kilda would go and win their only premiership against Collingwood. He also spent some time in Geelong as part of his curriculum requirements, further adding to his awareness of the game. 

Periodically, Prince Charles has been presented with footballs at various events, even as recently as last year when Tony Woods (AFL International Development Manager) and Chris Dow (AFL Europe Chairman) presented The Prince of Wales with another Sherrin.

A recent conversation with Morten Merhøj from the newly formed Odense Lions in Denmark is a revealing study of how a club has ridden the roller coaster of development and come through to be a new potential force in years to come on the Danish footy landscape. The following article is that story through Morten’s eyes: a story of dreams, setbacks, determination and bringing a vision to life.

“Well the story of how Odense Lions started really goes back to the year 2011. Daniel Petrolo and a few other guys tried to start a team in Odense.” (see previous story linked here )

In the second of Bigfooty Media's Jason Lassey's interviews about footy outside Australia he speaks to AFL Germany President Fabian Cordts. You can read more about this interview here.

Jason Lassey from Bigfooty Media has begun a series of interviews with people involved with footy outside Australia.  Below is the first in his series of interviews.  He chats in depth with ARFLI's Cian Quigley about footy in Ireland, Irish players in the AFL, the International Rules series and the upcoming IC14.  You can read more on the Bigfooty Forums here.

Charles Bernigaud bought home a little more than postcards and stuffed koalas from his trip to Australia. Amongst his collection of souvenirs was a new love. “I discovered that sport [Australian Rules football] when I was in Australia for a year, and I was really amazed by intensity [of the game]. From there an opportunity grew for him to “bring a piece of it [the trip and Australia] to France”.

And so, the ALFA Lions were born.

Lyon is the second largest city in France, with a population of around two million people within the greater urban area. It is in the central-eastern part of the country between Paris and Marseille.  Charles explains that “I made a request at the beginning of the year to the CNFA and asked them if there were any [Australian Rules] teams around Lyon I can play for. They answered no and told me that closest teams were in Strasbourg, Marseille and Paris. It was a good opportunity [to grow a club], because Lyon is well situated geographically. It’s the second biggest city of France so we knew that we could create something good.”

Reigning Brownlow Medalist Gary Ablett Junior and his brother and Geelong Premiership player Nathan Ablett will be in Port Moresby this week. They will be undertaking various activities for their church group, and it's charity - The Gateway Children's Fund.

As the end of October draws near and Australian based AFL fans wonder whether 2 or 3 weeks is the right length for the trade period or whether the Irish series is worth persisting with or not – we could be forgiving for thinking there’s not much going on in footy. Certainly the same can’t be said for AFL Fiji who have been working feverishly on many fronts.