World Footy News

The AFL Oceania Cup in Suva, Fiji is underway. Day 1 saw a lightning cup carnival format to warm up the sides in preparation for Fridays first round of cup matches.

The 2012 AFL Oceania Cup week of events kicks off on Thursday December 13th with a Lightning Carnival across the day; with matches commencing at 10am and wrapping up with a 3.30pm Grand Final followed by the presentations. Friday sees the main competition firing up – with ideally the travel cobwebs shaken off the day before. The official opening ceremony is scheduled for Friday 10am.

AFL Media Release

The AFL is pleased to announce Australia Post AFL Multicultural Ambassador Bachar Houli has been named an inaugural winner of the Award for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding.
 
In a partnership between the University of South Australia’s Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding and the Australia Day Council, the award was established to highlight the efforts of people around the nation who are contributing to social harmony and community cohesion.

As the first devout Muslim to play AFL, Richmond defender Bachar Houli has become a leading influence for many young Australian Muslims.
 
AFL National Community Engagement Manager Jason Mifsud said Bachar Houli is committed to strengthening cultural awareness and has shown he is a great community leader.

afl.com.au is reporting that the United States' Eric Wallace is trialling with North Melbourne with the aim of being listed as an International Rookie. 

Wallace, who turns 24 on Thursday, started training on Monday with the Kangaroos after being one of 10 international athletes to attend and test at October's NAB AFL Draft Combine.

There he caught the eye of the Kangaroos with his athletic ability. The 196cm and 102kg product recorded an 80cm standing vertical jump (in the top 3 per cent of results) and ran 2.90 seconds in the 20m sprint.

It seems North will almost certainly list Wallace, with the club stating that they are already sold on his athleticism and just want to evaluate his character and whether he will fit in with the club's culture.

See North Melbourne hops on US bandwagon for more.

The 2012 Youth AFL Oceania Cup will commence this week and once again to be held in Suva, Fiji. As the AFL’s Andrew Cadzow (Development Manager for AFL Asia Pacific) welcome message states "The Oceania Cup will play a vital role in showcasing the many talented players in our great game and more importantly highlight the development and growth of football through Asia Pacific."

This is the fourth year of the tournament, but this year there have been some important structural changes. For the first time both PNG and New Zealand have been placed directly into the South Pacific Cup, whilst players from Fiji, Nauru, Tonga, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands will battle it out in the hope of being selected in the U16 Oceania Squad to then compete against PNG and NZ in the South Pacific Cup April of next year in Townsville.

On Saturday the Solomon Islands AFL representatives departed for Fiji to compete in the 2012 AFL Oceania Cup. 9 young footballers plus AFL Solomons Job Vulita, with the support of key sponsor QBE Insurance (Head office in Honiara) the Solomon Sharks have been able to expand their representation this year after the success last year of Jave Sarere and Francis Ramo when they competed in an AFL combined team.

This year, the Solomons players will play for the “Solomons All Stars” in the Oceania Cup in Suva against teams from Tonga, Nauru, Fiji and Vanuatu.

The below is courtesy of the SIAFL :

Australian Rugby League fans already know Innisfail, in North Queensland, as the home of two test match internationals. Ask anyone remotely connected to Australia’s “other” football code and they will tell you that Innisfail is where North Queensland Cowboy’s star Ty Williams was born, along with Melbourne Storm’s Billy Slater, argued by many to be one of the game’s greatest full backs.

Innisfail has not been seen as a hotbed of talent for Australian Rules footballers.

Until now.

AFL Cairns Juniors have invested a great deal of time in recent months developing a junior Australian Rules football team in this beautiful town, located in the picturesque Johnston River Valley, 90 kilometres south of Cairns. Eddie, Tim, Baden and the crew from this organisation have been training Innisfail kids, as well as others in nearby Tully and Mission Beach, to produce the next wave of Aussie Rules stars.

The work they have done with local primary schools to get kids involved in our great game may see the next Billy Slater wearing a Gold Coast Suns or Brisbane Lions jumper rather than that of a Rugby League team.

The Victorian Amateur Football Association continued its unbeaten record against the New Zealand Hawks with two wins over the Under 18’s in Wellington. The VAFA is in its third year of sending an U18 invitational side to New Zealand to play matches against an U18 AFL NZ representative side.

This year saw an age shift for the NZ Hawks with the team previously fielding Under 20 teams against their competitors. With the upper limit now U18 new challenges were faced with a large gap in experience between the sides contributing to the result.

The loss of Hawthorn Scholarship players Shem Tatupu and Rhys Panui-Leth before the weekend was a blow but this also provided new talent with opportunities.
 

From International Scholarship Holder to an International Rookie at Hawthorn by the end of next season, the journey continues for NZ’s Kurt Heatherley.

He signed on an International Scholarship at the end of 2009 so the progress has been about carefully developing his football nous and skills to match his athletic capacity which saw him test extremely well at this year’s AFL Draft Camps. At 192cm, and weighing 83kg the teenager came second in the 20m sprint with a time of 2.84 seconds.

The 17-year-old will join the club in a near full-time capacity in 2013, training alongside his future Hawks teammates at Waverley while playing with the Sandringham Dragons in the TAC Cup.

Hawthorn head of coaching and development Chris Fagan described Heatherley as a “real competitor” with a great attitude. “He’ll do a full year of training with us this year, which is pretty exciting,” Fagan said. “We’ll be focussing on improving his kicking and his game sense.

So good has been his development since taking up football after being spotted by the Hawks as a 14-year-old, experts consider him a likely top 20 NAB AFL Draft pick if we was in the draft pool.

Kurt is not the only International Scholarship holder at the Hawks - fellow Kiwis Shem Tatupu and Ben Miller are also listed by the AFL club.

AFL PNG star graduate Gideon Simon will wear number 50 in 2013 at Richmond, and in early club training has made a good impression already.

Simon has progressed through the AFL PNG Coca Cola talent pathway, including the Under 16 Binatangs, the South Pacific squad and the AFL PNG Academy in Port Moresby. He was identified early and signed by Richmond as an international scholarship player a couple of years ago, and in October this year attended the AFL draft camp, along with other international scholarship players Brendan Beno (PNG - Bris) and Yoshi Harris (Nauru - GWS). It was at this time that Richmond announced that he was to be listed as a full international rookie - a path previously trod by many an Irish hopeful and a Canadian named Pyke.

The following is a press release from AFL PNG.

WFN welcomes aboard Wesley Hull who, amongst other interests, will examine some of the stories of grass roots footy within Australia.  Wesley will be familiar to some readers through his involvement with the Pyramid Power football club and our story about it.

White driftwood sits on the golden sand of Lilly Beach on Badu Island in the Torres Strait. Coconut Palms sway gently in whatever breezes the day brings. The water changes from blue to green to shades of grey, depending on the moods of the day. Turtles and dugongs cruise languidly by beneath the surface and various sea birds chatter and squawk about whatever they wish.

Surely this description of paradise has nothing to do with Australian football. Does it?

This picture of paradise changes once you add a few young boys and girls, who run with excited freedom along the beach. They gallop, screaming and laughing with joy, as they play a game of Rugby League, touch football or Aussie Rules. The delightful sounds of youth combined with the majesty of their surroundings. Idyllic.

Torres Strait is the body of water that separates mainland Australia from Papua New Guinea. At its narrowest it is 150 kilometres wide and contains over 250 islands. Some of these are alluvial islands made from the sediments of nearby rivers. Others are coral cays and others still are continental islands, part of the original Great Dividing Range. Very few of these islands have permanent settlements.

This is where Henry and Nathaniel grew up. Born on neighbouring Thursday Island and living their youngest days on Badu. This was light years away from the hustle and bustle of big cities, and equally as far away from the MCG, the symbolic home of AFL football.

Over the years there have been numerous players make the trek down to Australia to play their chosen sport of Australian football.  The experience invariably leaves them a far better footballer thanks to the higher standard and continuity of weekly training and playing.  It's also a great life experience, and all the better if they can obtain work and become embedded in the local culture.

With all that in mind Australian Jaye Macumber (pictured on right of photo), coach of Canada's Northwind at the 2011 International Cup, is calling for more international players to make the move and he's willing to help.  He's especially enthusiastic about the prospects of locating them with country clubs which are often able to offer employment and need players.