World Footy News

Two stories have recently been in the New Zealand news celebrating junior talent identification and development.

Firstly, this weekend sees a National U 16 tournament to be held in Wellington. Usually such events are run as province against province and seem the natural apex tournament as a result of local area Hawks Cup events. This is not the case with this weekend’s event.

Rather, the cream of New Zealand’s under 16 talent, identified by AFLNZ talent scouts, have been organised into regional teams to contest this inaugural event. The three teams are: North Suns, Metro Eagles and Central Giants.

From this event, a New Zealand under 16 side will be chosen to compete in the South Pacific tournament involving Papua New Guinea and an Oceania team in Townsville, Queensland, Australia this April. From there, players can be selected to play for the South Pacific team to compete in the Australian Under 16 Championship.

The Australian Football League will unite with the Australian Federal Police for the sixth annual Unity Cup to be held in Melbourne on March 24.

Representing the diversity of our game, Australia Post AFL multicultural ambassadors David Rodan (Fijian) and Majak Daw (Sudanese) will hold a leadership session during the multicultural carnival which will take place at JJ Holland Park in Kensington.

For the average footy follower, like me, Andorra is not a place that is frequently visited.  But a quick wander through an internet image search will unearth an incredible array of pictures which show this principality to be among the most beautiful places in the world.

The sixth smallest nation in Europe, Andorra is bordered by Spain and France in the Pyrenees Mountains. More importantly to readers is the prediction by Douglas Pate that Andorran Aussie Rules will be back in 2013 with a number of goals in mind…and not just six pointers.

Douglas Pate is already well known in international Australian Rules football circles for his work in developing Andorran footy, as well as footy in Catalonia in Spain. He is also a past president of the Danish Australian Football League back in 1995. Douglas admits that Andorra’s hiatus from the international scene in recent times coincides with his own pursuit of personal priorities. But he says “this year we [will] reactivate with the goal to go to the European Championships in Bordeaux”.

On March 10 the Masala Football Club had it's first outing at Gosch's Paddock in Richmond. In their kit donated by the Richmond Football Club they took on Team Africa on a very hot day. While both sides were fairly well matched skill wise, the superior numbers of the Africans was a big advantage in the heat and they ran out winners by about ten goals.

 

 

The following transcript is AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou's speech delivered tonight in Melbourne to launch the 2013 AFL season.

Tonight marks the tenth occasion I have been privileged to launch the season as Chief Executive of the AFL. This season also marks the tenth anniversary of the appointment of our chairman, Mike Fitzpatrick to the AFL Commission.

Ten is an important number, not just a milestone, but a fork in the road that allows for reflection, for analysis and for anticipation. Events over the past few months have made that audit trail even more important.

The 2013 AFL season gets underway this week with Round 1 split over two weeks. The first match is on Friday night Australian time between the Adelaide Football Club and the Essendon Football Club. The schedule can be seen below.

One key indicator for whether AFL football games will continue to be played in Wellington will be the attendance at the Anzac Day game between the Sydney Swans and St Kilda.

The 3 pre-season games played between 1998-2001 had attendances within the range of 8,000 - 12,000 people. When reflecting on some of the attendances in the AFL last year this probably doesn't compare too badly, at times.

It has been reported that major hotels in Wellington are already full with 2 night minimum stays being required in some cases over the Anzac Day break. Certainly trying to book an airfare to Wellington late last month meant this correspondent had to travel for over 6 hours to get there via Sydney at rather an inflated cost!

However all this bodes extremely well with the Wellington Stadium seating over 30,000 and some predicting a sell out with the influx of international visitors as well as the locals keen to attend the game.

Certainly it is an historic occasion for the AFL and the code in general and those interested in AFL being played internationally can only hope it is a massive success.

For more see Full houses for Anzac AFL clash

As a follow up from a previous story about the prospect of the Central Australian Redtails joining the NTFL Premier League for the 2013/4 season, the AFLNT have released the following press release asking for more information. This is not necessarily a negative development. It may also mean that the Redtails have met criteria to date and now more boxes need to be ticked.

Northern Territory Football League traditional powerhouse, St Mary’s have won this season’s premiership with a come from behind 31 point victory over the Tiwi Bombers.

The premiership is the 29th for the Darwin club, putting it 6 flags clear of their nearest rivals the Darwin Buffaloes. What makes this more remarkable is that the club only entered the league in 1952. This year marked their 60th anniversary, and this premiership makes it a mathematically amazing average of almost one premiership every two years.

This remarkable effort is easier to understand when their list of notable players includes Maurice Rioli, Michael Long, Peter Burgoyne, Raphael and Xavier Clarke, Scott Chisholm, Ronnie Burns, Austin Wonaeamirri and currently Cyril Rioli.

The Brisbane Lions tonight won the AFL's preseason competition the NAB Cup Grand Final at Etihad Stadium by 40 points.

Brisbane jumped the Carlton line-up that was heralded by broadcaster Channel 7 as being chock a block full of top draft picks over a number of seasons.

But from the first quarter it was the Lions who had Pearce Hanley racking up ten possessions running off the half back line and along with Zorko, Rich and Karnezis allowed the Lions to get out to an 12 point lead at quarter time. Hanley of course came to the Lions as an International Rookie and although he has been a long time in the making he outshone all those top draft picks at Carlton.

Hanley's form tonight followed up on his improving form in the last two years at Brisbane (where he has finished in the Lion's top 4 in the club best and fairest).

The weather and the crowds arrived at Tony Ireland Stadium in Townsville on a recent weekend almost exactly as the script demanded. A crowd of 7000 paying fans as well as about 1000 kids descended on the city’s premier Australian Rules football venue for a show that had been years in dreaming and many months in arranging.

The largest city in North Queensland played host to its first ever NAB Cup game between the North Melbourne Kangaroos and the Gold Coast Suns. For the record North Melbourne 2.13.6 (102) defeated Gold Coast 1.11.14 (89), holding on by 13 points after having jumped out of the blocks early to lead by as much as 48 points.

NAB Cup Grand Final	AUSTRALIANETWORK	AUSTRALIANETWORK	ORBIT SHOWTIMENETWORK	FOX SOCCER	AFLTV.AFL.COM.AU
	INDIA	ASIA&PACIFIC	MIDDLE EAST	USA	WORLDWIDE (Exc Aus and NZ)
Carlton vs. Brisbane Lions	15-Mar-13	15-Mar-13	15-Mar-13	15-Mar-13	15-Mar-13
Etihad Stadium, Melbourne	2230 IST (delay)	2300 HKT/FJT(delay)	1130 KSA (LIVE)	0130 PDT (LIVE)	08:45GMT (LIVE)