World Footy News

Stateside Footy presents a pair of Australian Rules Football matches, played on October 8, 2011 at the USAFL Nationals Tournament in Austin, TX. The first half of the show features Women's Footy as a combined team featuring the Boston Lady Demons (along with players from Baltimore-Washington and Columbus) plays a 2x20 Women's Footy match against the Minnesota Freeze Women's team.

The second half features a 2x20 Division 4 match between a mixed team featuring reserves from Boston, San Diego and Seattle taking on a mixed squad of players from Dallas, Austin and Portland.

The Southern Dragons, a footy club based mainly around Melbourne's Asian immigrant community, travelled to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) on Saturday January 7th for a tour match against the Vietnam Swans, a club composed mainly of Australian expats living and working in Vietnam.

On this occasion, it was the Vietnamese from Australia who ran out decisive winners over the Australians from Vietnam, the final margin being 11.14 (80) to 5.6 (36) in favour of the Dragons.

The Dragons play in Melbourne's Southern Football League, where they this year claimed their first-ever senior flag by defeating Mount Waverley in the Division 3 Grand Final. Reflecting the club's depth, the reserves also made it to the decider, although they had to be content with being runners-up. (Herald Sun report here).

Approximately half of the Dragons' players are of Vietnamese descent, with the remainder including (among others) Camdodian, Chinese, Thai, Greek, New Zealand and Anglo Australians. One of their stalwarts is Jiaming Pi (aka JP), a native of China who came to Australia as a teenager and is well-known to the international footy crowd for leading the Chinese Red Demons at the last two International Cups. JP is currently a multicultural ambassador for the AFL, provided commentary in Mandarin for the crowd at the ''Shanghai Showdown'' between Melbourne and the Brisbane Lions in 2010, and maintains a blog dedicated to coverage of footy news for Chinese speakers.

Players from the Southern Dragons have trained with the Swans in Saigon, as members of the Swans have with the Dragons in Melbourne - "Damo" Judd from the Vietnam Swans even having played a match with them. In July 2010, four of the Southern Dragons joined the Swans and Vietnam Veterans at the MCG for a formal prematch function with the Sydney Swans, photos of which can be seen here.

The Burnaby Eagles celebrate winning the 2011 BC Footy grand final for footy in Vancouver in today's video.

The Toulouse Hawks get some great exposure on French TV show Avant Match in September 2011, French National team representative Emilien Martinez is interviewed.

The Melbourne Football Club are continuing to talk up their commitment to China, both as a training venue and as a land of commercial opportunities.  Amongst that are community programs and developing the game there.

It's early days yet, but it's pleasing that the Demons are still very much interested in pursuing relationships in China.  Hopefully some continuity can be established in centres such as Beijing and Tianjin (site of the first dedicated footy field in China).

Read more at China: Enter the Dragon (part one), China: I want to take you higher (part two) and China:Growing the game (part three).

A couple of videos today. The first taken on the team bus shortly after arriving in Australia collecting Dragus' thoughts on his team's journey and the second video showing footage from IC11 and USAFL Nationals while Dragus is interviewed on AFL Grand Final day on SEN radio in Melbourne.

The USAFL club Minnesota Freeze have put out a recruitment video (below) ahead of their upcoming 2012 footy campaign.