World Footy News

One Sunday I headed to the MCG. In the interests of full disclosure I am a Hawthorn fan. But today I went along to see what Marty Clarke's game was like. The Irishman made the quickest transition from Gaelic football to Australian football of any of the Irish to come to play at senior level in the AFL.

Of course he went home to play Gaelic football after successful seasons in Australia, before returning last season to the AFL.

This is how I saw Marty's day pan out.

With the snow on distant hills still thawing and the sun enthusiastically beating down on Moscow, the 2013 Gagarin Cup was played this weekend in Russia.

The Gagarin Cup takes its name from the Russian Cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, who became the first human into space when he completed an orbit of the Earth in a Vostok spaceship on April 12th 1961, hence the choice of date for this weekend’s footy carnival. Cosmonautics Day, or Den Kosmonavtiki in Russian, is a national holiday in Russia.

In an enormous show of strength for the Australian Rules football code in Russia, and a shot in the arm for those who have been working so hard for years to establish the game in the country, there were 5 teams consisting of 9 per side, ranking this as one of the best days in Russian football.

The full list of athletes to be tested at the AFL Combine starting in LA today can be seen below.

The fifth edition of the ANZAC cup, organised jointly by France's CNFA and AFL Europe, will be held this year on April 20th in the village of Villers-Bretonneux.

The game which sees France take on Australian expats, is now a well established feature of the ANZAC celebrations held each year in northern France thanks to the great support from the local community. This year the australian TV channel Seven News will be covering the game for the “Sunrise” show to be broadcast on April 25th before the Essendon-Collingwood game.

Although previous editions were played on a full sized oval, this year's confrontation will follow the 9 a side format so common in Europe. This change in format is only due to the cost of renting the field previously used as the oval. Thomas Urban hopes the CNFA will be able to gather enough funds to get the game back to full format for next year's centenary of the start of World War I.

After some difficulties in the past in finding players for the Australian team, AFL Europe is pulling out all the stops to make sure it assembles the best team possible. As usual, France will use this game to test its national side against some tough opposition and hope to hold on the cup they won last year.

One thing that is clear after interviewing Adam Pearce, president of AFL Norway, is that the year 2013 will be one of consolidating their achievements of last year to build a stronger Australian Rules football product for the future.

“After a very successful debut in the Euro Cup in Edinburgh last year with our national team taking out the unofficial trophy for the best team of "developing nations", we are again making the 2013 Euro Cup in Bordeaux our focus for the year” explains Adam.

After having seen the successful National U15 Kickstart Championships played last week in Townsville, the focus of junior representative football remains in North Queensland. This weekend in Airlie Beach, the North Queensland U16 Championships will commence. The following is an article from AFL Queensland which gives an insight into this important addition to the Queensland representative scene.

Illinois basketballer Sam McLaurin has some impressive highlights (seen in the video reel below) both at his former college team Coastal Carolina and his current Illinois Fighting Illini team.  Standing at 203cms the 23 year old is a potential AFL ruckman and will be put through his paces in LA from April 14-16 in the second official US Combine.

 [youtube:Xd6zp7ga9u4]

Following their 9.5 (59) to 1.1 (7) victory over Ireland's Warriors on 6th April in Guildford, the Great Britain Bulldogs have climbed two spots to 7th on our unofficial World Rankings. The US and Tonga each slipped a position as a result. Ireland maintained their position as number two behind Australia, but their margin over PNG is now perilously narrow.

The Bulldogs head across to Dublin for the second and final match of the series against Ireland, scheduled for 20th April.

See below for interim rankings update.

Upon the completion of the last match on Thursday of the South Pacific Cup the 30 player squad was selected to take on the Kickstart Flying Boomerangs at 9 am tomorrow (Friday) morning. This initial squad will be reduced further to 25 to compete in the NAB AFL U/16 national championships to be held in Sydney in July. Congratulations to all those who took part in the tournament and especially to those selected in the squad below.

Days 3 and 4 of the AFL South Pacific Cup played out yesterday (Wednesday) and today (Thursday) at the Tony Ireland Stadium in Townsville. The Papua New Guinea Binatangs lived up to pre tournament favouratism and completed an unbeaten run through the tournament to take out the title. Unbeaten by a whisker though after the draw against Oceania on Tuesday.

Upon the completion of the last match on Thursday, the 30 player squad was selected to take on the Kickstart Flying Boomerangs at 9 am tomorrow (Friday) morning. This initial squad will be reduced further to 25 to compete in the NAB AFL U/16 national championships to be held in Sydney in July. See separate article for the squad.

Sydney born Mick Byrne's playing past in Aussie Rules helps him fit neatly into the Rugby Union Super 15’s Blues co-coaching jigsaw. Like many Sydney youngsters Mick Byrne began his sporting life on the league field. Then one of his schoolmates persuaded him to bring his teenage 2m frame to Aussie Rules training.

"I really liked it because of the freedom of running and the kicking that was involved," Byrne said. So in his last year at school, Byrne ended up playing rugby on Thursday, Aussie Rules on Saturday and Rugby League on Sunday.

He made an Aussie Rules rep side as a ruckman and centre half forward and signed a contract as an interstate player and headed off to Melbourne. Byrne went to the Melbourne Demons, subsequently Hawthorn where he won a Grand Final winner's medal, and the Sydney Swans in a 167 game career over a 13-year career.

The 2013 AFL season moves on to Round 3 this week.   The international broadcast schedule can be seen below. All times are correct at the time of publishing and WFN takes no responsibility for changes to the schedule.