World Footy News

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.

Across the weekend of November 9-11 the AFL PNG Coca Cola National Championships were concluded in the cities of Lae and Kimbe. In Lae, the Southern, Highlands and Northern regions gathered with age groups across Under 13, 15, 17 for boys and Under 17 for girls playing off in a series of matches leading to selection in 2013 national squads as well as competing for the Coca-Cola Shield, awarded to the best performed region both on and off the field.
The Islands region held their championships in Kimbe the following week (Nov 17-18), due mainly to transport difficulties. AFL Asia Pacific Development officer Ben Drew and AFL PNG GM Murray Bird worked with the Islands officials to hold a series of matches that allowed for the inclusion of boys and girls from the Islands region to the national squads.

The following is from the AFL PNG press release

Martin Flanagan writes for the Age and is one of the few footy writers in mainstream AFL media who has been on-board with the International Cup. In particular Martin has followed the Peace Team, and recently he published this story Kick-to-kick in a rocket zone

It is "...an account of footy in a war zone written by Kevin Nafte, an Israeli member of the AFL Peace Team, to his Israeli and Palestinian teammates. It is in the spirit of the Peace Team ''dialogues'' in which players from both sides were encouraged to express their views to each other.

Following the 3-Test Series between Fiji and Nauru the WFN World Rankings have been updated. This is the first update since the completion of the 2011 International Cup and includes the recent win by the United States over Canada.

As mentioned in recent articles, Fiji have now played the required 8 games to be fully ranked in our unofficial system, entering at 11th. Nauru move into 5th, displacing South Africa. Samoa have not played an international match for over 4 years and so fall back to provisional ranking only.

Please note also Canada and USA have now played 36 matches each but no change occurred in their respective Rating Points after their last Match in August.

Read on for the full list and note that the full World Rankings pages have been updated.

The final match of the historic 3 test series between host Fiji Tribe and the visiting Nauru Chiefs was played on Friday evening at Albert Park in Suva. The final match saw the Chiefs re-assert their dominance with a 72 point win.

My first thoughts are that irrespective of losing in straight sets, the Fiji Tribe will have learned a tremendous amount from the series and if able to harness those learnings they will only be all the better for it with an eye towards the 2014 International Cup. These sentiments were similar to those of AFL Fiji's Lupe Wolfgramm as reported by the FijiTimes "Chiefs boot Tribes in footy:
She said the players had a better understanding of the game and would use the lessons learnt from the Test to prepare for the 2014 International Cup in Australia.
"These Test matches have built a good platform for our international matches next year," Wolfgramm said. "It has also opened opportunities to host other nations in the future."

See full match report below.

As mentioned in Tigers Expanding AFL Territory Across India, AFL India is preparing for the first ever inter-city football tournament in India, to be held in Kozhikode this December.

AFL India held an official media launch for the tournament in Gurgaon last week, where they announced OGM (Oil and Gas Mining) as a major sponsor, and the company's ambassador, former Australian Test cricket captain Steve Waugh, as the tournament's patron.

AFL clubs Richmond, Essendon and GWS and Big Bash club the Melbourne Stars all sent in signed jumpers as auction items, which have assisted AFL India raise money for the tournament.

Read on for the Official Press Release.

Fiji Joins World Rankings 'Club'

Fiji has become the 20th Nation to be Fully Ranked in WFN World Rankings following Game Two in the 3-Test series against Nauru.

Fiji have slipped into 11th place below Samoa with 41.00 Rating Points following the 40 point loss to Nauru in Game Two. The 11.9 (75) - 5.5 (35) score line brought about a Rating Exchange of 1.49 Points, this has pushed up Nauru's Points rating to 50.35 and a rise up the ranks to 5th Place displacing South Africa to 6th Place.

Predictions For Game Three.

If the Chiefs can hold the Tribe to another plus 40 point win in Game 3 the Points Exchange will be 0.82 Rating Points Nauru finishing the series with a rating of 51.17 Points in 5th Place, and Fiji will have 40.18 Rating Points and ranked 11th.