World Footy News

The AFL NZ have named their AFL New Zealand Heritage team, representing the best 22 players of New Zealand heritage to have played in the AFL.

Attending the inaugural High Performance Awards for AFL New Zealand, I was surprised at some of the players selected to be acknowledged as part of the team.

Richmond's Dustin Martin stands out in any crowd, with his neck tattoo signifying his tribal heritage, as does the Maori artwork inked on the arms of former Carlton player Paul Bower and Collingwood's Marley Williams. Frankston's Khan Haretuku's surname provides a hint and the media space afforded recently to the promising Hawthorn duo of Kurt Heatherley and Shem Tatupu would cause their selection to be no surprise.

This team is relevant to current times with the criteria seeming to be active players now, or very recently.

Given that, the full squad can been seen on the video clips available here.

Cristiano Colizzi, Communications & Media Manager at the Roma Football Club, was justifiably excited when chatting about the 2013 season. His beloved Roma team had just won their second premiership in the four year history of the competition in Italy, so when the nuggetty Blue’s back pocket was asked to tell a little more he decided to start…at the beginning.

“AFL Italia was born in 2009 thanks to Nicola Giampaolo and Armando Colombo, who started training some guys for a national (Italy) team. At the 2009 Euro Cup in Zagreb (Samobor), they placed 13th overall.”

“Then, with Luca Tramontin, they started to involve some guys near Milan and Lugano (Switzerland). Meanwhile Marco Musella [made] contact with them and started building a team in Rome. On December 12th 2009, Marco founded the Roma Football Club (RFC), choosing colours and logo of the Carlton Football Club from Down Under.”

“In 2010 [we] started the first Italian premiership with the Milano Footy Club, Roma Football Club, Genova Dockers and the Lugano Bankers.”

The World XVIII today completed a clean sweep of matches in their division of the NAB AFL Under-16 Championships kicking 25.13 to the Flying Boomerangs 5.3. The South Pacific team went down heavily to the WA Northwest team.

Yesterday the Victorian Country team defeated South Australia 9.8 to 8.12 to take the Division 1 title. NSW/ACT defeated Tasmania today to take out Division 2.

Division Two & Three results – Round Three matches played today at the Blacktown International Sportspark in Sydney.

World XVIII 25.13 (163)
Flying Boomerangs 5.3 (33)

GOALS
World XVIII: Sokoyi 5, McGivney 3, Paligorov 2, Kenny 2, Chol 2, Mamur 2, Kerbatieh, Aujla, Jok, Kassem, Kennedy, Moshoeshoe, Greyling, Mkhize, Sekori
Flying Boomerangs: Young 2, Hampton 2, Nelson

BEST
World XVIII: Kerbatieh, Aujla, Jok, Sokoyi, McGivney, El Moussalli
Flying Boomerangs: Gresham, Young, Davis, Wilkes, Powell-Pepper, Waterbury


WA North West 16.15 (111)
South Pacific 3.9 (27)

GOALS
WA North West: Birch 6, Lockyer, Djiagween, Petera, Gore, Curtain, Martin, Ah Chee, Shaw, Adams, Oakley
South Pacific: Savere, Clark, Tuvasi, Foilape

BEST
WA North West: Simons, Butler, Cox, Birch, Adams, Evans
South Pacific: Savere, B.Tirang, Riddell, Rai, Reti, J.Tirang, Ramo

The World XVIII won Division Three

The city of Cairns is currently in preparation mode for our next AFL match on Saturday. Whilst we are a little concerned about whether we will see more premiership matches here in 2014 and beyond (something which will be discussed at all levels post-game), the people of this far northern city and looking forward to a tremendous match.

 In 2009, the Gold Coast suns ran down the Essendon VFL affiliate, the Bendigo Bombers, with a goal in the dying seconds to steal the match. The match in 2010 provided one of the season’s genuine upsets when the Suns defeated the highly fancied Tigers by making better use of the howling gale that day. Then last year, the amazing Karmichael Hunt goal after the siren to win the game left an impression in everyone’s mind of what a great game was being bought to the city.

This latest press release from the AFL provides more details, as well as providing some momentum for future matches in Cairns from next year onwards.

 

Mike McFarlane tells the story of his dad and his cousin playing kick to kick for hours down in Port Melbourne. Nothing out of the ordinary there, until he hits you with the news that the cousin was none other than Bob Skilton: three time Brownlow Medallist, South Melbourne superstar and legend of the game. It is now easier to sense that those Skilton genes have something to do with this remarkable story out of British Columbia, Canada.

“Bob Skilton is my second cousin and grew up with my father in Port Melbourne. My dad often told us stories of going to the park with Bob to kick footies for hours at a time. We have met him a few times and I think he is proud that relatives of his have had some success in footy even though it is in a different country. My daughter, wife and I are huge Swans fans and this is not only because they wear the Canadian colors, red and white but also because of our proud family connection to the Swans!”

That lineage has just produced another great feat with the selection of Hanna McFarlane, the daughter of Mike (and that would be niece of Bob) to represent Canada in the Northern Lights women’s national team in the upcoming Parallel Cup against the USA Freedom.

The name Arafura is an indigenous word to the original people of the Moluccas which loosely means “children of the mountains” or “people of the mountains”. It’s modern application is that of the name of the Arafura Sea which is a body of water bounded by northern Australia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor.

In footballing terms it is the name of the women’s Australian Rules football team comprising players from the Northern Territory, North Queensland (Cairns) and Papua New Guinea. The women who made up this side represented their countries and states with honour at the recent Women’s National Championships, held last week in Cairns.

 In an AFL first, the Western Bulldogs will live tweet in Vietnamese during this weekend’s afternoon clash against Essendon on Sunday - to mark AFL Multicultural Round.

The Club will also celebrate the languages of Melbourne’s diverse West in the lead up to the round – publishing footy articles on westernbulldogs.com.au in Vietnamese, Mandarin and Amharic (Ethiopian).

 

The 2013 season saw some big changes to the Brit Cup, starting with the first year the name has been changed to include a sponsor: ACM Sports.  However as usual the aim of the tournament was to give British players a chance to shine as the Aussie-expats take a weekend off.

In addition, the format was also changed to allow the hosts, Birmingham Bears, to hold games on a rugby pitch, the common ground type for regional 9-a-side Australian football teams in the UK. Instead of 16-a-side, each team fielded a 10-a-side squad, and instead of an oval field, it was rectangular, in-keeping with the rugby pitch markings with a 40m kicking zone at either end. Shots at goal from outside the zone were not counted.

The smaller team size allowed for more teams than usual, with four teams from the AFL Central and Northern England league – CNE Power, CNE Warriors, Midlands Sharks and league team Nottingham Scorpions – being joined by the WARFL Red Dragons and the AFL London Honeybadgers.

The event was held at Old Yardleians RFC in Birmingham, where games were played on two pitches. Each game was two 12 minute halves, with the winner taking 4 points. The competition was in round robin format, with the top two teams playing each other in the final.
 

Highlights of the World XVIII Round 1 win over WA Northwest on Sunday. Later today the World XVIII take on the South Pacific team.

North Queensland will once again become the focus of the AFL world when Cairns hosts its annual Gold Coast Suns versus Richmond Tigers match at Cazalys Stadium on Saturday at 4.40pm. This is the main event, following on from the earlier NAB Cup match in Townsville pre-season between the Suns and Kangaroos.

This is a huge match for Cairns. Two weeks ago the northern city played host to the 2013 Women’s National Championships. Now the Gold Coast, undefeated in Cairns after three starts (they defeated the Bendigo Bombers as an AFL side in 2010), get a chance to enhance their own slim finals chances and seriously threaten those of Richmond. Following is a media release from the AFL giving the details.

North Queensland set for NEAFL side, PNG / South Pacific part of the plans

The recent victory of the AFLP PNG Coca-Cola Under 14 Binatangs in the Queensland State Academy Championships has not gone unnoticed. Former Fitzroy legend and now AFL Queensland CEO Mick Conlan was on hand on the Gold Coast to see the talent firsthand.

The potential for future growth of the PNG and by extension the South Pacific nations presence in footy in Queensland and possibly in the NEAFL has been flagged. The talent pathways are to continue to become more clearly defined. Mick Conlan and AFL PNG's Murray Bird discuss further the potential.