World Footy News

The Foxtel Cup Round 2 has thrown up the first real surprise of the tournament so far.  Although North Ballarat was knocked out in Round 1, it was expected that fellow VFL clubs Williamstown and the Northern Bullants would win through over their SANFL and WAFL counterparts, given the Croweaters (SA) put up their weaker clubs and the WA league is generally accepted as a bit lower in standard.  But although Williamstown honoured their part, the Bullants suffered an unexpected loss.

The SANFL has paid a high price in the credibility stakes by allowing its lower ranked 2010 clubs to represent it against the best of the other states.  West Adelaide went down to top flight Williamstown by 19 points but the Bloods were only 6th in the SANFL in 2010 and were pumped by fellow SANFL club Norwood by 54 points the week before it played the Vics, so hardly in keeping with the Foxtel concept of the nation's best state league sides.

Also through to the semis are East Perth after a narrow 6 point win over the Northern Territory Thunder, and Port Adelaide Magpies after a 16 point win over North Adelaide.  The Thunder doing so well was a credit to their development since the Top End entered a team in Queensland's league, and now the NEAFL.

It was reasonable to expect the Foxtel Cup would show us the best of the VFL > the worst of the SANFL > best of the WAFL, but the Sandgropers (WA) have managed to push two of their clubs through to the semis.  So the battle remains alive for the top three state leagues. 

 

WFN has updated its unofficial World Rankings after the recent international matches in Europe. Favourites Ireland (ranked 4th) comfortably defeated Great Britain (10th) in England, whilst in Paris home side France lost fairly convincingly to Germany (13th). It was the debut for France in full field internationals, remembering it takes 8 matches to be consider fully ranked on our table. The results saw all teams hold steady in their positions.

As far as we know these are the last full field international prior to the 2011 AFL International Cup. Depending on how many matches are played, we hope to see Tonga, Peace Team, China and India play enough games to fully qualify on our rankings. France may qualify depending on how we count lightning carnival matches (if they are played to start IC11).

In the next few weeks we'll open up some discussions on how the various countries might fare at IC11.

Latest matches:

British Bulldogs	5.6 (36)
Irish Warriors	11.6 (72)

France	2.7 (19)
Germany	13.5 (83)

Below are our updated ranks.

Finally the news the women’s football world has been waiting for - the announcement of the PNG 2011 International Cup Women’s Team! After watching the men’s team win IC08, one can only wonder at the talent these girls are going to display. Will they prove to be as formidable as the men, or can the experience of Ireland, USA and Canada keep them in check. We’ll just have to wait and see!

Read on for the team list and to see some pics of the girls at the trials.

 

The Australian Rules Football League of Ireland (ARFLI) has revealed that Jeep Ireland has signed up to become its official sponsor for the next three seasons.

The partnership between ARFLI and Jeep will run from 2011 to 2013 and will extend across all Australian Football competitions and development programmes including the Schools' Cup. The Jeep logo will also appear on the national team kit during the AFL Europe annual EuroCup event, which takes place in Belfast on October 8th hosted by ARFLI.

Jeep Ireland's investment in Australian Football in this country is the largest single investment made in the sport and will allow ARFLI to continue to grow participation levels year on year. Announcing the partnership, ARFLI President Ciaran O' Hara said:"We are delighted to have Jeep on board as our major sponsor and partner for the next three years. Jeep's involvement with us will help us establish new development programmes and raise the profile of our domestic competitions, not to mention assisting us in the push to win the EuroCup on home soil later this year. Jeep's partnership, coupled with our recent teamwear sponsorship with Waterford-based Azzurri Sportswear, represents a massive endorsement of our league and we hope that our members, their families and our wider community will support our partners as passionately as they support us."

There is new footy club in Zagreb, with the new Zapruđe AFC (or KAN - Klub Australskog Nogometa - in Croatian) joining the Velika Gorica Bombers, Zaprešić Eagles, Agram Power and Zagreb Hawks clubs in the Croatian capital.

Zapruđe club founder and Croatian Knights stalwart Josip Kravar says that some players from other Zagreb area clubs decided to found their own club in their area of the town. The boys are aiming to build on real community spirit, and in the space of one month have attracted 25 players and have around 50 people watching every session from the sidelines.

Kravar says "This is a product of an idea to encourage progress of footy as in Melbourne, when the sport began long ago by founding the clubs in various part of the town. We are building strong community clubs and planning to start a project in September to pull up the kids from school in Zapruđe and start with school of Australian football.

The AFL has confirmed to worldfootynews.com that two high profile footballers will not be eligible to appear at the International Cup in 2011. While it would be good publicity to have them in the International Cup the AFL feels exemptions for these players would not be fair to opposition countries.

Israel Folau's development with GWS continues in a positive direction as he has been kicking goals for the club recently in a move to the forward line, but he will not be eligible for Tonga (he is of Tongan descent but born and raised in NSW and Queensland).

Three time AFL premiership player, veteran Mal Michael, was reported last week to have dominated the ruck for Aberfeldie Park in the EDFL. He was born in PNG but mostly raised in Australia. Mal has closely followed the PNG Mosquitoes but also does not fit the International Cup criteria, as specified below.

The Australian Rules Football League of Ireland has reported on some significant historical events throughout its lifespan and today another significant milestone was reached. The first ever ladies match in Ireland was played today at the Boucher road pitches in Belfast between the Kilrea Kookaburras and the Dublin Angels, the Angels running out confident winners 6.5 (41) to the Kilrea Kookaburras 1.2 (8).

From the first bounce it was clear that both sides were giving 110% to the game, Dublin quickly scoring the first two goals and setting a tone with quick feet and hard tackles. Kilrea came back fighting after the first break, as they blocked the momentum Dublin had in the first quarter. but this didn't stop the points hitting the Angels board.

Thanks to Leiha Shrubsall for this report.

The German Black Eagles travelled to Paris last weekend to take on the French Coqs, in the first-ever 18-a-side international for the French national team. The home side battled hard, but struggled against their more experienced opponents, with the Eagles holding the French scoreless in the first quarter.

The second quarter saw the French rally and get their first goal on the board, but by half time the Germans were ahead by 35 points.

From the 3 minute mark of the third term the Eagles were reduced to 17 men on the field, after Daniel Karsch went to hospital with a dislocated shoulder, but in spite of this the Germans again held the French scoreless for the quarter, while they added 6 goals themselves, pulling away to a 74-point lead at the final break.

The last quarter effort from the French allowed them to regain some pride, dominating play and denying the Germans any further score, but inaccuracy in front of goal stopped them from making a bigger impression on the final result, Germany finishing 64-point winners, 13.5 (83) to France's 2.7 (19), in a performance described by Germany's coach Troy Pedder as "a solid effort from the whole squad, with no passengers."

The AFL International Cup is held every 3 years, and this year alongside the men’s competition will be the first ever Women’s Division. The earlier rounds will be held in Sydney, and the later rounds and the finals will be held in Melbourne. Whilst the men start a little earlier on the 12th August, on the 15th there will be no men’s matches and the whole day will be reserved for the start of the women’s competition. The other women’s matches will coincide with men’s games. The Women’s Division competition will finish with the Grand Finals on the 26th August. The men’s finals and the closing ceremony will be held the next day on the 27th. The locations of the finals have not yet been arranged.

The women’s competition will be a “round robin” style tournament. There are six teams which will be randomly allocated a number. After four rounds of matches, the teams will be ranked 1-6 and the top two teams will advance to the finals. Additionally, the 3rd and 4th ranked teams, and the 5th and 6th ranked teams will also play each other as the match experience will help the ongoing development of the teams.

Teams competing in the Women’s Division are Canada, Ireland, Italy, PNG, USA and a combined Indigenous/Multicultural team.
 

Readers will probably have noticed the scrolling football scores across the top of our website over the last year or so. In case you were wondering, they come courtesy of The Footy Record (TFR), a site set up by Ian Hill, a good friend of worldfootynews.com and a former president of the Denmark Australian Football League.

The site focuses mainly on scores from international Aussie Rules, but it's important to note that people behind TFR do not enter most of the results themselves as the job would be too large. If a league wants to see their results up there it is their responsibility to make contact with TFR, arrange for an account and enter their own results. Some exceptions have been made, with TFR posting International Cup results and WFN putting up AFL scores to try to add attention to the feed.

Adding scores from other tournaments requires a new competition to be created and additional information to be added, so it's not something we do routinely, not even for tournaments featuring the World XVIII and South Pacific. So the message is we like scores feed but we nor TFR have the resources to update the data so it's strictly DIY.

The 2011 Women's Nationals have completed, with Victoria too strong as expected in Division One. NSW were pushed harder by ACT but took home Division Two. All the competing teams then converged on AAMI Stadium where they did a lap of honour at half time of the Adelaide versus West Coast AFL match.

 

 

Victoria won Division One

Victoria 16.5 (101) defeated Western Australia 3.1 (19)

New South Wales won Division Two

New South Wales 7.10 (52) defeated ACT 6.3 (39)

Congratulations to still undefeated Victoria and to up and coming New South Wales! And here are some pictures of the girls in action from over the whole event...

North Melbourne listed, Sudanese born Majak Daw was the subject of racial abuse as he played for Werribee in the VFL last week at Port Melbourne.  The spectator who yelled the racial abuse at Daw was escorted from the ground and has since been banned from attending matches.  Daw was upset and felt marginalised by the abuse and subsequently won support from not only his team mates but the whole football community.  While this sort of abuse has been around  for a very long time, the current attitude is that it is not acceptable and will be acted on to stamp it out immediately, as happened in this case. 

And while players in the past just had to put up with it now they are encouraged to speak up about it.  Majak's reaction to the event was sought by media outlets across Melbourne this week.  The Youtube video below sees Majak interviewed by 3AW's talkback host Neil Mitchell.