World Footy News

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.

For the first time the nations competing at the 2011 AFL International Cup will have not just the Cup to win but also prize money.

Nominal Prize money has been introduced for the first time.  The AFL's Tony Woods explained, "While we recognise the amateur status of the tournament, the spirit of the International Cup and the motivation behind participants we are keen to provide a small token reward that can be used to assist in the development of the game on the team’s return to their country. Prize money will be awarded by way of a grant to the recipient countries for the 2012 season."

The breakdown is as follows: 

2011 sees the inaugural Women's International Cup in Australian Football. Unfortunately Italy appears to have unexpectedly decided they will not be attending, which has thrown some uncertainty into the schedule.

The AFL has said that given there is no women's International Cup history, rankings were random and drawn out of a hat.

Final teams for IC11 Women’s and rankings are:

1. PNG
2. Australia *
3. Canada
4. Ireland
5. USA

* Australian Indigenous/Multicultural team

The Australian Football League has released the draw and details of the 2011 AFL International Cup. The fourth Cup will feature 18 men's sides and 5 women's sides. Here we will focus on the man, and detail the women's schedule in a later article.

The men's competition will see the teams seeded from 1 to 18 and then sorted into 6 approximately even pools for a lightning tournament in the style of the 2011 NAB AFL Cup (pre-season). On the opening day the teams will play each of the other two members of their pool in games of 2 x 15 minute halves (10 min half-time break). The result will be 6 pools of 3 sorted teams. The top 2 from each will go through to Division 1 and the bottom side from each will form Division 2. Hence there will be 12 in Div 1 and 6 in Div 2.

The seedings are:

* Did not compete IC08