World Footy News

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.

The AFL is now 21 years old and to commemorate the milestone Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper pondered what the sport's top league might look like in 2032, another 21 years time.

The paper talked to well known international advocate Kevin Sheedy, Geelong President and former AFL Commissioner Colin Carter, and AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou.

As much as the international footy community loves Sheed's enthusiasm, to read Demetriou suggesting the AFL may include clubs from outside of Australia was perhaps the the most significant aspect of the article. Many involved in international footy would love to see that happen, and Sheedy and Colin Carter (a long time advocate for South Africa) have suggested it before, but to have Demetriou state it as a possibility publicly could be considered quite a break through.

Sports branding studio Locker Room 51, founded by long-time international footy identity and Croatian Knights stalwart Kolja Koračak, has produced a poster for fans of the 2011 International Cup to follow and record the scores from the tournament.

Pictured at left is a low-res version of the draw and score card for the Lightning Tournament/Seeding Round, with the full size version available here.

Locker Room 51 have created sports branding for a number of clubs and organisations spanning many different sports. In Australian rules football, their work is well-known around Europe and further afield, including logos for the EU and Euro Cups, European Championships, the European Legion jumper, and numerous clubs and league logos.

Ed - Sorry for this story disappearing for a few hours, we had some issues with the media gallery not letting people download the full-sized file. Seems to be working now, email us if you have any further problems downloading it.

Scottish Auskick is a juniors program that will teach children the fundamental skills needed to play Aussie Rules. The organisation was formed in late 2010 to cover a need to develop and grow the game in Scotland, especially at a junior level, and help alleviate some of the annual need to look for new mature aged players to play the sport that each club must go through.

It is hoped by teaching the game in Schools and setting up junior leagues, these players will then progress to Club and hopefully International level.

It was decided to use the name Scottish ‘Auskick’ and retain the link with the already established and successful NAB Auskick program in Australia so that people would perhaps recognise what the program was about instantly when they heard the name. Rather than rush into a program we decided to first seek the correct accreditation to enable our Coaches to teach in Schools and in the community, and for this, Scottish Auskick would like to thank ‘AFL Auskick’ and Disclosure Scotland for their support and guidance throughout the process.

The full first day's draw for the men's side of the 2011 AFL International Cup is listed below.

The seedings were basely mainly on IC08 placements, and sees the 18 teams placed in six pools. The top two from each pool go through to Division 1 and the bottom team from each goes through to Division 2. See Lightning tournament opening and seedings for the seedings and the full discussion of how the later rounds will be played. Once the Cup is underway we'll post articles showing the upcoming matches.

Below are the times and locations for the Round 1 matches.