World Footy News

Additional reporting by Tobietta Rhyman and Aaron Richard.

AFL Italia Femminile have confirmed that they are not taking part in the Women’s Division of the International Cup. The Swiss men’s team also decided not to compete at IC11.

There’s always two sides to a story, and in this case maybe three. The situation with the Italian women’s side was always complicated as the AFL prefers groups to work through the local affiliated bodies such as AFL Italia and AFL Europe whereas AFL Italia Femminile appears to have worked separately to the local League and at times directly with the AFL. The Italian women were also more closely aligned with the Swiss men’s competition, although notably their jumpers did feature the AFL Italia logo, so at one time there was cross-over.

The situation between all the bodies appears to have deteriorated over a period of months, culminating with a possible communication breakdown as the Cup draw was announced. The bottom line is that sadly, despite a lot of work by AFL Femminile Italia and we believe an AFL desire to have them present, the women of Italy will not be represented at IC11.

Last weekend, Saturday 2nd July, saw the Brit Cup played for the first time ever in the North of England at Manton Coliery Worksop, with the Nottingham Scorpions lifting the trophy and breaking the 8-year winning streak of the West London Wildcats.

The Brit Cup is the traditional locals-only annual tournament, which has been showing off the best of British footy talent for a number of years.

With the IC2011 taking priority this year (something that was agreed to at the National Conference in November 2010 in Putney), the AFL London are pushing forward their fixture to get their season finished before the the Bulldogs fly out to Australia, and thus could only send up a West London/Wimbledon combined team under the name "London Wild Hawks".

The Wild Hawks were joined by 4 regional rep sides - the Northern Warriors, Southern Saxons, West Midlands Wolves and WARFL Red Devils - and the Nottingham Scorpions, who were eventual champions and the sole stand-alone club side on the day.

Karl Haigh from the Huddersfield Rams was event organizer and also umpired on the day, having stood down this season as Northern Warriors captain, assisted by Rams head coach and last year's Northern Warriors head Coach Neil Morrison, along with long-time English footy identity Andrew Markham who covered much of the umpiring duties and was behind the media and publicity.

This report courtesy of Karl Haigh.

For fans wanting to keep up to date on the Irish team vying for the ultimate prize at this year's International Cup, there is a new blog covering the Green Machine's preparations.

Peter Ross from the Irish Warriors is man behind the blog, saying "the blog will cover aspects of the preparation, fundraising, injuries etc. I hope the blog is both fun and interesting and is designed to raise awareness of Aussie Rules in Ireland and also get more attention for the International Cup in Australia."

Whilst the Irish IC squad has not yet been made public, they are expected to field a number of eligible Irish expats currently playing suburban footy in Australia and will no doubt be very tough to beat.

Peter Ross' blog can be found at irishwarriors.wordpress.com.

The new group bringing Australian rules football to Moscow were the subject for the following report in the English-language Moscow News this week.

Mentioned in the article are the group's plans to attend the 2011 Euro Cup in Belfast, which will mark the first appearance of a Russian national team on the international stage.

The Moscow footy circle kicked off at the start of June, and are planning to launch their first two local league teams in the coming weeks. This is in addition to the group in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, who also started playing footy in Russia earlier this year.

The full article from the Moscow Times is reprinted below, at left is one of the proposed designs for the inaugural Russian national team jumper.

American footy made an appearance on Channel 9's Almost Footy Legends segment on The Footy Show last week. The clip (seen below) sent in by Bill Robert of Stateside Footy sees the goal post "obliterated" with Bill's commentary mimicked by the Billy Brownless. The segment can be seen from the 1 minute 36 second mark.

On Channel 9's The Footy Show two week's ago an international flavour came to the long running popular Almost Football Legends segment. The segment features videos sent in from the public with footy highlights. In this case the segment featured English teams Manchester vs Birmingham and also a great mark from PNG young gun David Meli. In the Youtube video below the segment can be seen from the 2 minute 45 second mark.

The World XVIII team have had their first win on Australian soil defeating an Indigenous Under 15 team in a warm up match this morning. Played in cold blustery conditions at Arden St, the World XVIII team won every quarter to run out winners by about five goals (no official scores were kept to our knowledge).

While their opponents were overall smaller and younger, they gave a competitive perfomance that made the game a solid hit out for the World XVIII team that will play their first match in the National Under16 Championships in Sydney on Sunday. The World team who only came together in camp yesterday looked to mesh much more as the game wore on and they all learned a little more of their team mates.

The Swedish Elks are the latest team to name their squad for the IC11, with players from across the country represented.

The Elks have a very strong southern and western Swedish element, with the Helsingborg Saints supplying nine members to the Elks (including captain Johan Lantz), Port Malmö following with seven, and the Gothenburg Beserkers with six representatives in the squad.

The remaining six members of the 22-man squad include four from the Stockholm local league, one from the Karlstad Eagles, and one currently playing suburban footy in Melbourne.

Coaching the squad will be Daniel McClaer, who steered the Elks to their 3rd place finish in last year's inaugural European Championships.

The Italian national women's side defeated Bolivia 36-10 in Fontanafredda last weekend, achieving their first-ever victory.

Team Bolivian were represented by a squad of Bolivians playing footy in the new Italian women's league, which kicked off recently with 4 active clubs, and 2 more hoping to join soon.

This report courtesy of Daniela Scalia.

The iWed is a iPhone/Android app and it's walking us down the aisle to the IC2011.

Ireland's national women's footy side, the Banshees, are headed to Australia for the inaugural Women's International Cup.

Within our organisation we are lucky enough to have people with great talents on and off the field.

The president of the league Ciaran O'Hara and myself had discussed a few different fundraising options at the start of the year, he had said that previous years sponsorship had been not been as successful as he would have liked and that he wanted to do something different to give people an organic reason to fund our teams. Then he suggested the idea of providing a service to Irish businesses by creating an app. The iWed was born, acting as Ireland's only wedding app directory.

The full 2011 AFL International Cup itinerary is shown below.

It includes all the match days as well as other events including the Women's Launch Function on Monday August 15th, the International Development Forum (as per 2008), the two AFL matches which will have IC games as curtain raisers (one being the IC Grand Final), the Captains Lunch with the AFL Commission and Andrew Demetriou, and the International Cup Gala Function at the Crown Palladium in Melboune on Friday August 26th.

The Australian Football League has launched an official Facebook page for the 4th International Cup.

The page is www.facebook.com/AFLInternationalCup.

You can also get IC11 news (besides right here on WFN) at the AFL website, in particular as directed to by ic11.com.au.

And a reminder that we'd love you to join our own Facebook group at www.facebook.com/groups/5197533739.