World Footy News

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)

Well almost the top.  The AFL today announced that the man who has been at the operations helm at Hawthorn for the past eight years will replace Adrian Anderson as the AFL's General Manager, Operations.  It had been suggested in various media outlets that the AFL clubs were very keen for the position to be taken up by someone who had been part of the operations of an AFL club rather than someone from outside the league.  Our readers with a slant towards international football development will also be pleased to see that among Mark Evans' responsibilities at Hawthorn was the "Establishment of New South Wales, New Zealand, Ireland and U.S. recruiting pathways."

The full announcement from the AFL follows.

The Northern Territory Football League Grand Final will be played this weekend to finish off a fantastic season for the code with this year’s most consistent and dominant team, St Mary’s, taking on reigning premiers the Tiwi Bombers.

The following press release from the AFLNT details how the weekend of footy will unfold. The weekend will feature many Grand Finals in various grades and divisions, with the Premier League Grand Final the highlight of the weekend.

With no MCG, Aami Stadium or even a Norwood Oval to call their own, AFL Japan's Top League play matches on rented rugby grounds and public parks as do most footy leagues and clubs outside Australia.

The amateur nature of the international footy community has most leagues and clubs playing and/or training on borrowed school or university sports grounds, public parks or any flat* (or not so flat) paddock or river bank they can find.

However, AFL Japan has taken an almost unprecedented step in international footy by opening its own office and shopfront in Tokyo. Opened at the start of 2013 the AFL Japan Office is where all the day-to-day business of AFL Japan takes place, and storage of merchandise and equipment.

Open 9am to 6pm Monday to Friday, the office is a physical presence for Australian Football fans in Japan where the public (curious or committed) can walk in and purchase a wide range of AFL Japan and/or Aussie Football merchandise eg. Guernseys, books, DVDs and “Sherrins” or have queries about Japan Footy or AFL answered.

The office is situated at 27-9-101 Denenchoufu-Honcho Oota-Ku, Tokyo. A short 3min walk from Numabe Station, Tokyo Tamagawa Line.

Phone 03-4520-9930.

For more (in Japanese), visit http://www.jafl.org/topics_detail1/id=276.

*Vanuatu AFL have their own full size oval but crab holes have to be filled in before each day's play.

International football will hit Cairns next month when the PNG Binatangs Under 16 team arrives en route to the South Pacific Cup in Townsville.

As part of the lead up to their bigger mission in Townsville, the Papua New Guinea team has accepted the challenge of playing a combined U16/U18 team from Pyramid Power Junior AFL club in Gordonvale, 25 kilometres south of Cairns.

Pyramid Power is one of the newest clubs in the AFL Cairns Juniors, but has already been active in the world of international Australian Rules football. Their “Brother Club” project has seen them interact with clubs overseas, so this opportunity is an extension of their international dealings.

Last weekend a footy match was played under grey skies in Cork, Ireland. The event featured the Leeside Lions. That was nothing new or unexpected, though very welcome. It also, however, featured the UCC Bombers. That was something new…and a breath of fresh air for Australian Rules football as another new club took to the international stage.

The game marked the first ever match for the newest team on the Irish landscape, and no matter how it is viewed, the day was a success for the UCC crew.

Leeside Lions won the day on the scoreboard with the final score being 10.16 (76) to UCC Bombers 4.5 (29). But in every other way UCC just racked up victory after victory. Every box ticked in the lead up to the game culminated in the ultimate win when the team ran on to the field.

AFL Media Release.

The AFL today announced the finalisation of international broadcast rights into New Zealand for the 2013 Toyota AFL Premiership Season that will see unprecedented television coverage of the code across the Tasman Sea. 

Sommet Sports and SKY Television will showcase AFL content throughout the year with increased coverage across the Premiership Season, Finals Series, Grand Final and weekly highlights program.  Both networks will broadcast the Anzac Day match, St Kilda v Sydney Swans at Westpac Stadium, live nationally from 7.30pm local time – in what will be a significant event for the code.

The second official AFL USA combine will be moved up to April this year. Last year's combine in LA took place at the end of August and left a short space of time between the combine and the time for the graduates of the combine to come to the Australian national combine held in Melbourne in the first week of October. This year's earlier time will allow those given the opportunity to come to Australia in October to brush up on the game and their skills.

As usual the international athletes are available for clubs to sign up on an international scholarship immediately rather than wait until the athlete goes throught the Australian combine if they like what they see in April. As with last year there is expected to be college athletes (and recently graduated) from baskeball, gridiron and soccer put through their paces in LA once again.

Former Seattle University basketballer Eric Wallace was the ultimate success story of last year's combine being given an International rookie spot with North Melbourne. Wallace features in this year's updated recruitment video on Youtube that can be seen below. While most of the promo is the same content as last year Wallace has replace the delisted Shae McNamara as the US face of the combine video.

[youtube:4a8Hgq29TV0]

In our continuing series on the future of footy in Asia we look at what is probably the second biggest league in the Asian region, behind only Japan's TLeague (and perhaps the in-development East Asian AFL).

The Lantau Lizards have become the sixth team to enter the South China Australian Football League (SCAFL), joining already established teams in Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou. Lantau is an island in Hong Kong, bringing the number of Hong Kong based teams in the league to four.

The Lantau Lizards, along with the Hong Kong Reds and Hong Kong Blues, play under the flag of the Hong Kong Dragons, which are the reigning Asian Champs, while the fourth team from Hong Kong, Hong Kong Gaelic, plays in the SCAFL independently. The Guangzhou Scorpions and Macau Lightning make up the remainder of the league.

The league is currently played weekly with Guangzhou, Macau and Hong Kong alternating between hosting entire rounds to make it easier to afford ground costs and umpires. The matches are played similar to the first round of the NAB Cup, with games having two 20-minute halves and each team playing two matches, totaling six matches for the day.

While 9 aside footy has been a crucial vehicle for Australian Football on the international front (where availability of grounds are limited and regular local comps use a more achievable team size), in Australia it’s been far less well recognised. For a time the AFL has dabbled with ‘Rec Footy’; and last year re-launched it as ‘Cadbury 9s’ (or AFL 9s). For regular followers of the game the notion of the game's ‘untouchables’ were put forward a couple of years back and people were challenged to consider what was ‘untouchable’ about the game.

An oval field?

18 aside? Or the 16 of the old VFA for a period? This discussion has been had again in recent days on Melbourne radio (SEN in particular) due in no small part to the role of the rules committee and Kevin Bartlett. What are the non-negotiable’s? There's now talk of a 'charter' as reported last Friday (by Patrick Smith - a regular guest of Bartlett on SEN) - see Visionary charter to manage evolving changes to AFL rules.