World Footy News

The AIS-AFL Academy will send a squad of Australia’s brightest future AFL stars to New Zealand for a nine day tour in January 2012. Pleasingly NZ are taking this incredibly seriously and have looked far and wide in developing their initial squad.

An amazing list of players with New Zealand heritage has been listed in the initial New Zealand squad in a move that will drive the AFL bloggers into a frenzy.
 

The itinerary will commence in Auckland and culminate in Wellington where the AIS-AFL Squad will play against the New Zealand Hawks at Westpac Stadium 12.00pm on Saturday January 28th .

A behind the scenes look at how the South African Lions warmed up before their match against the US Revolution at the 2011 International Cup.

The 2011 Youth AFL Oceania Cup starts this week.  Planes laden with excited young national representatives, in many cases flying overseas for the first time, are jetting toward Fiji.  The Vanuatu Volcanoes departed with coach Mal Thiel perhaps more excited than any of his charges as the Volcanoes set themselves for their international debut.

 

I would like to tell you what this SBS interview with Margot is specifically about but mon français n'est pas si bon.

 

The AFL tthis week announced the fixture for the 2012 FOXTEL Cup -- the knockout competition introduced this year to showcase the quality of state league football across the country. 

 

AFL General Manager National and International Development Andrew Dillon said the AFL had been delighted with the success of this year's inaugural competition, won by Williamstown, and said the 16 teams had now been confirmed for next year's tournament.

 

Melbourne community TV station Channel 31's "The Local Footy Show" went international covering Game Day 7 at Royal Park. Much of the coverage focuses on the NZ team and interviews with Victorian Premier Ted Bailleau, Brett Kirk and Will McKenzie among others.

worldfootynews.com recently reported on the transition of the AFL's National and International Development Manager, David Matthews, to CEO of the AFL's newest club, the Greater Western Sydney Giants.  That begged the question of who Matthews' replacement would be and whether Matthews and GWS coach Kevin Sheedy would actively pursue an international agenda.  We caught up with the new CEO to find out.

Firstly we were keen to know who would take on the role of Development Manager for the AFL and whether he would be as passionate about the international component as his predecessor.  Matthews was confident, having already worked with his repalcement.

"Andrew Dillon, whom is currently on the AFL Executive, has assumed responsibility for Development.  Andrew has been on the Executive for a number of years and has a genuine passion for, and understanding of, development. As a couple of examples of his International interest, he wrote the rules for the International Scholarship Scheme and helped to organise the match in Shanghai (attended also).  He will be a strong advocate and he, Tony Woods and I recently presented an upgraded international plan to the AFL Commission".
 

The AFL season is well and truly over, and with only a few exceptions including the upcoming Oceania U16 Championships and those few areas like the Northern Territory and NZ that play in the months outside the regular AFL season, there is not much on field footy activity. 

So we will take the opportunity over the next few weeks to post up some video footage mostly from 2011 that has surfaced onto sites such as Youtube, both from domestic international footy and from the International Cup.

To kick it off though we go back to 2010 to the AFL's National Under 16 Championships where the World XVIII and South Pacific teams were introduced to the footy development folks of Australia alongside a number of future AFL stars.

 

After plenty of media coverage in Ireland in the past week the AFL has officially appointed recently retired Sydney Swans player Tadhg Kennelly as an AFL Ambassador.

Tadhg will undertake a number of development roles. He will be an assistant coach and mentor for the AIS-AFL Academy level two squad under head coach Michael O’Loughlin and alongside other mentors/assistant coaches Brad Johnson, Matthew Lloyd and Glen Jakovich. He will also coach the Under 16 NSW/ACT team and will be an assistant coach for Under 18 NSW/ACT team in the NAB AFL Under 16 and Under 18 Championships.

With the third AFL Oceania Cup youth tournament set to start early next week - and perhaps to start the journey of some well down the AFL talent pathway - it is timely to remind ourselves of the tangible assistance we might able to provide even if we are far removed from the various outposts of footy.

In the audio interview below you can hear PNG's team manager Moses Kari speak to Radio Australia's Pius Bonjui about the PNG Binatangs preparation.  The team selection process has been interrupted by "social issues" in Lae.  Their team also sees the addition of three Solomon Islanders to their squad.  
 

The Binatangs are confident of going back to back this year.