World Footy News

Collingwood Football Club today announced that they have delisted Shae McNamara. The American has been at the club for three years and despite many good VFL games for the club he was unable to crack the senior list. McNamara also played in NAB Cup matches for the club in 2011 and 2012.

Ironically his delisting comes as the AFL are running a Combine in Los Angeles to assess US athletes for potential transition to Australian football. McNamara was used in the video to promote the Combine as an athlete who had transitioned from college basketball.

His own entrance to the game however famously came after he sent video footage of himself to AFL clubs and attracted Collingwood’s attention. He had previously been playing basketball in Germany.

The Cardiff Panthers made history as they won the Welsh Australian Rules Football League for the 4th year in a row.

Having finished second the table at the end of the Home & Away season, the Panthers were forced to travel to the home of the Minor Premiership winners, the Bristol Dockers, for a repeat of last year's Grand Final. The Cardiff Panthers took on the Bristol Dockers at Dings RFC.

Thanks to Josh Davey from the WARFL for this report.

AFL International Development Manager Tony Woods spoke to SEN Radio's Kevin Bartlett last week about the camp that starts today (US time) in Los Angeles.  Audio below:

The USAFL today released the names of the 26 athletes that will take part in the inaugural Australian Football US Combine.

The Combine will test 21 student athletes with basketball backgrounds, four with football backgrounds and one USAFL player Tyler Mounce from the Orange County Bombers.

The Combine will be held in Redondo Beach, Los Angeles over the next three days from Monday the 27th of August. The pilot program will mirror the Australian Football League’s (AFL) Combine testing. Similar to the NFL Combine, AFL Combine testing includes standing and vertical jumps, sprinting, agility and endurance.

Attending from the AFL will be Tony Woods, Tadhg Kennelly, Mick Ablett, James Hepner and Amy Hattam.   Attending from the USAFL will be Doren James (Operations Manager), Andy Vanica (President), Matt Bishop (Revolution Head Coach) and Dan Sarbacker  (Development Team Head Coach).  Sports clothing and accessories company Under Armour will be providing the testing gear for the athletes.

The full list of athletes is as follows:

 Please note that these details are correct at the time of publishing. WFN accepts no responsibility for any changes to these times by broadcasters. Please check local guides or afl.com.au. 

2012 TOYOTA AFL PREMIERSHIP SEASON – ROUND 22 INTERNATIONAL BROADCAST SCHEDULE Friday 24 August  – Sunday 26 August.

MEDIA RELEASE FROM THE AUSTRALIAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE

 

The AFL today joined the Human Rights Commission and the Australian Government in endorsing a new national anti-racism strategy - Racism. It Stops With Me.

 

Represented by North Melbourne players Andrew Swallow and Majak Daw, the AFL is one of a number of organisations across business, sport and Government who are supporting the campaign on the basis of their long-standing work on combating racism.

Swedish rock band 8Stone have written a theme song titled "Break them bones" for the Helsingborg Saints - we present for you the film clip featuring both the band and the Helsingborg Saints in action.

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Thanks to Alex Benjamin of USAFL Webcast for his full recap of the 49th Parallel Cup from his Blog site.  Alex can also be seen weekly on his Justin.tv channel Friday evenings from Smyrna, Tennessee (Saturday mornings Melbourne, Australia time).

2012 marked the return of the Parallel Cup after no contest last year because of the International Cup.  This was the first time that the Parallel Cup has visited the city of Dublin, Ohio..

The site of the Parallel Cup was the beautiful Darree Fields, in which the main field that all four games would be played was the best field condition in any competition this year, albeit with the grass just a bit high.

While in the past Parallel Cup carried on in relative obscurity, with most of the attention focussing on  the US Nationals, this year as for the first time in its history it was being broadcast live on two platforms.  Video was shown on a fixed camera on Justin.tv through the USAFL Weekly Channel and via audio by Brian Reiss and Lee W. Mowen on OhioSportsRadioNetwork (OSRN).

The development of women’s football in Europe outside of Ireland has been slow and troubled. In previous years, teams have sprung up quickly in Italy and then Switzerland, a promise of how appealing the game is to European women and how quickly it can be developed, but after the breakaway of most Italian players to play the similar 6-a-side game O-Rules, it left the map of remaining female players very sparsely populated.

However, with the rise of European tourists getting into the game in Australia, there are growing numbers of talented European female players cropping up across Europe. With no teams left to face the Irish, and no one country able to field a full 9-a-side team, a handful of female players travelled to Reading in early July, and after having a kick about together at the Brit Cup, the decision was made to amalgamate numbers and enter the Euro Cup as a joint European team.

“Imagine all the people… sharing all the world.”

What does John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ have to do with linking up international Australian Football clubs all over the world? Well this song was the inspiration for Pyramid Power’s Wesley Hull to embark on a virtual voyage of discovery, contacting clubs across Australia and around the world through social media and asking them to become part of their network as a “big brother club”.

Pyramid Power is no stranger to crossing boundaries and linking communities together. The club is a small junior football club located in the small town of Gordonvale near Cairns and 80-90% of the kids come from remote and impoverished communities in the Torres Strait and the Cape York Peninsula and are boarders at the town’s indigenous college. Others come from the nearby Yarrabah aboriginal community.
 

In the tradition of the annual ANZAC Day match, the Vietnam Swans have proposed that an annual AFL match be played on Vietnam Veterans’ Day to honour those who fought so bravely for their country. The proposal is for next year, as 2013 will mark forty years of Vietnamese-Australian diplomatic relations.

Vietnam Veterans’ Day is on the 18th of August, which falls on a Sunday in 2013. The planned proposal is to include a live cross for the minute’s silence from Long Tan, which is conducted at 3.30pm local time. This would then be telecast live on the SGC or MCG scoreboard at 6.30pm EAST.

The Swans have sent to the plans to several ministers and people in the AFL and AFL Chairman Mike Fitzpatrick is said to be “interested” in the proposal.

An AFL exhibition match in India remains a very real possibility, with The Age this week reporting that senior Richmond officials were to meet with Indian High Commissioner Biren Nanda and several Australian Politicians in Canberra. The match looks likely to be held in 2014, against GWS Giants, at Mumbai’s DY Patil Stadium.

Richmond currently has an Indian Tigers supporter group and supported the Indian team at the 2011 International Cup.

Full article: Tigers move in on Mumbai.