World Footy News

Irishman Zac Tuohy continues to develop as an attacking weapon for Carlton, with his long kicking having extra value during the NAB Cup where goals from outside the 50m arc are worth 9 points. This highlights package from the 2012 season shows off some of that long kicking skill.

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It is quite likely that the last thing on the mind of John Campbell Miles, as he hopefully kicked rocks along the bed of the Leichhardt River back in 1923 looking for gold or other treasures, was that 90 years later Australian Rules footballers would be kicking goals of their own near that same location. But that is exactly what is now happening, and with some real heavyweight support behind it, Australian Rules football in Mount Isa may be about to unearth its own mother lode of talent.

Such is the eclectic nature of mining towns that men and women bring more to a location than just skills and an ethic of hard work. They bring themselves and their assortment of interests and hobbies.

So it was that three men, notably Alan Metcalfe, John Edwards and John Cargill among others, arrived in Mount Isa and worked hard to establish the Mount Isa Australian Football League. Alan Metcalfe went on to be a key instigator in the further development of the North Australian Football Championships which featured teams from Mt Isa, Darwin, Alice Springs, Townsville, Cairns and Port Moresby.

By 1957 the town boasted three teams (Tigers, Rovers & Healy) which was enough to start competition. Due to mining downturns and the transient nature of the populations of mining towns, footy in Mount Isa has often been a stop/start proposition.

We have had a number of articles on the progress of football in Canada - covering Mike Pyke, the OAFL, the EAFL, the NWPAFL, the NDJAFL and junior football.

Now it is time take a snapshot of women’s footy in Western Canada and specifically Calgary. The west is arguably the centre for women’s football in Canada with the Calgary Kookaburras, Edmonton Emus and the Vancouver Wildcats supplying just over half the players for the Northern Lights, the Canadian national women’s team.

The AFL Europe has published results from the AFL Combine held in Dublin on February 12th and 13th, with a twenty-four young GAA players from across Ireland and the UK demonstrating their athletic prowess and hoping to garner interest from the professionals Down Under. The best players from the trials will be invited to the 2013 AFL Draft Combine, which will be held in October in Melbourne.

The Combine has created some media interest in Ireland, ranging from a report on a favourite local son in Ger Leech scouted at AFL European Combine, a report from high-profile Irish code-hopper Tadhg Kennelly in Kennelly Runs Rules over AFL Prospects and a bit of opposition to the perceived drain of young talent from Ireland to the AFL in Dubs Doctor: Aussie Rules recruiters trying to drag our Young Children over to That Country.

Read full story to see results for the top three performers in each trial, courtesy of AFL Europe.

 The Greater Western Sydney GIANTS have topped 10,000 members on the eve of their first 2013 NAB Cup matches at Blacktown International Sportspark this Sunday.

As they prepare for just their second year in the AFL, the GIANTS membership now stands at 10,026, compared to 4,671 at the same time last year.

The announcement came as the club unveiled a new membership package, the Global GIANTS, for AFL fans around the world.

GIANTS Head Coach Kevin Sheedy said the club was on track to surpass its 2012 membership total of 10,241.

It's been a while since we have had an Aussie rules movie doing the rounds. On March 7 around Australia the film Blinder will be released. No details are available yet on any international release. The trailer for the movie can be seen below.

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The following is from the the Blinder movie website. Legendary actor Jack Thompson reprises his role as a football coach three decades after The Club, in new film Blinder which explores our country's love affair with the greatest sport in the world. Shot around Torquay, Victoria, the story follows an ex-footballer who, embracing the life lessons his coach once taught him, reignites an old flame after a long absence away from his home town.

Footage from Australian TV station NITV covering Game 1 between the South African Lions and the Flying Boomerangs played in Potchefstroom last month.

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When Tayo Cafarella, the current Regional Development Manager for AFL Northern Territory in the town of Galiwinku, first reported for work he was surprised. The local oval was closed for cultural reasons, which seemed to put a stop to his work before it even started.

Not so, according to the kids in town. Oval or no oval the footy must go on. As Tayo says, “this did not stop the juniors who were at my door every day pleading for footy [so] we played 10 rounds of our U13’s competition in the local park. The boys were running around barefoot, dodging trees, dogs, a sandpit and the odd pig. Not once did they complain of the conditions, they were just stoked to be playing footy!”

So, welcome to the spirit of Elcho Island, and Galiwinku, its largest town. A quick search of the map will show that Elcho Island is located near the north-eastern tip of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. The island is long and narrow, surrounded by the Arafura Sea to the west and Cadell Strait to the east. It is one of the southernmost islands in Wessel Group and Galiwinku sits roughly in the cenre of the island.

Fledgling USAFL club, the Cleveland Cannons have released a promo video as they head into the 2013 season.  You can watch the Youtube video below and you can hookup with the club on Facebook here. 

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In part two of our look at the local footy scene in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, we take a look at the Hawks from Haslach, a suburb of the small city of Herrenberg.

Along with the Ludwigsburg, the Haslach Hawks are one of the two local footy clubs that have grown out of players from the Stuttgart Emus bring footy closer to home.

Driving force behind the Hawks is Jakob Jung, who spent a year as an exchange student in Bribie Island, Queensland, in 2009-10.

I am very lucky that I can travel the stretch of road between Cairns and Townsville many times a year. The drive takes in some of the finest scenery in Australia. Along the way there are the imposing twin mountains, Bartle Frere and Bellenden Ker, with their luxuriant rainforest canopies.

There is the beach at Cardwell with its views across to majestic Hinchinbrook Island. Mile upon mile of sugar cane farms surrounding the towns of Gordonvale, Innisfail, Tully and Ingham in the valleys of the Mulgrave, Johnston, Tully and Herbert Rivers.

Then there are the detours to Mission Beach, Wallaman Falls, Paluma and more. It truly is an amazing part of the world.

At either and of the drive are two growing cities. They are rivals in many ways - complementary in others. Some believe that Cairns is the “tourist capital” of the north and others see Townsville as the “administrative capital”. These descriptions are too simplistic, and are an argument for another day. What is becoming clear, however, is that these two northern cities in tropical Australia are about to become locked in a battle to see an AFL team franchise based there by 2030.

The German state of Baden-Württemberg, located in the country's south-west, has been represented in the AFLG by the Stuttgart Emus for a number of years now. Besides the Emus however, there are also a number of regional towns where interested German and Australian footy fanatics are working on the creation of new clubs, with the possibility that this year may see a local league start play.

The most active of the regional teams are the Taipans, founded in the medium-sized city of Ludwigsburg around 15km north of Stuttgart. Ludwigsburg has been home to a number of Stuttgart Emus players over the past few years, including local Kevin Kilger and Aussie expat Chris Robertson, a native of Williamstown in Melbourne's inner-west who has played with the Emus since 2009 and coached them in the second half of the 2011 season.