World Footy News

The Iceland Ravens today officially announced that they will not be attending the 2011 International Cup, with Icelandic AFL president Friðgeir "Fritz" Ásgeirsson making the following statement:

"It is with a heavy heart and great regret that I have to announce to you that the Icelandic National Team will not be participating in the IC11. We left it late to make the final decision, hoping that by some grace of god we would be able to participate, but to no avail. After weeks of deliberation we have concluded that we simply cannot risk overstraining the group. Most of our players are new to the game and such a big effort, as the IC11 trip and participation is, would put great strain on the guys, physically, mentally and not least financially.

We have therefore decided to concentrate on European competitions for the time being, hoping that we can build on our resent success here and bring an even stronger team to the IC14. Who knows, maybe we'll be able to generate some revenue during the meantime and subsidize the journey for the National Team to the IC14."

The IceAFL kicked off their 3-team domestic league in 2010, as well as making their full-field debut at the inaugural European Championship in Australian Football, held in Denmark and Sweden during last August. We wish the IceAFL all the best - they've achieved some impressive growth as a league in only a short period of time.

Photo: The Iceland Ravens at the EC2010.

The Denmark Vikings have announced a preliminary squad list of 26 players for the 2011 International Cup, with a number of familiar names set to make the trip to Australia in August.

All Danish domestic clubs except for Århus have at least one member in the side, with power club Farum is again the most represented with 15 players - a reflection of the Cats having Denmark's largest and longest-running juniors program.

Five members of the European Legion are in the squad, including Mathias Biron who also travelled to Australia as part of the World 18 last year. Chris Campion and Nicholai Secher will also bring some Australian club experience to the team, having stayed on in Australia after the IC08 to play a season with Thomson in the Geelong & District FL.

National team coach Jim Campion notes that the squad is not 100% finalised, with some members still to confirm their availability, but the Vikings list as it currently stands is given below.

The seemingly inevitable has occurred, with several more teams confirmed as pulling out of the 2011 International Cup. Every 3 years the list of hopefuls shrinks as the event draws near, and we watch on hoping that the final number is at least higher than the previous tournaments. That still looks reasonably safe at this stage, especially as Timor-Leste are apparently back in contention, a surprise given their position in February. Note that this list is "in contention", not a list of 100% confirmed contestants.

WFN spoke to AFL Multicultural and International Coordinator Peter Romaniw and he confirmed that Croatia have pulled out due to the large financial challenge. Also missing from the last list we saw are Iceland, Finland and Indonesia. As a very young footy nation and a developing country the absence of Indonesia is no surprise.

The current list now stands at 21, including an Australian-based multicultural team. 2008 saw 16 nations in the main draw. Question marks remain over some candidates, such as the Swiss still needing some funding proposals to succeed.

AFL Queensland reports the final day results from the Australia Post Under 16 Queensland state championships.

The final day play off matches included the match up of the undefeated Gold Coast Stingrays and the Coca-Cola PNG Binatangs, in the clash for 1st place. The Gold Coast ran out 40-point winners, but the Binatangs were far from disgraced in their 11.7 (73) to 4.9 (33) loss.

Read on for the full results from today's games.

Next Saturday, May 7th, at 1:30pm, the Sacramento Screamers men’s team will play their first ever game, taking on the Las Vegas Gamblers. As a curtain raiser to this game, there will also be a women’s development game held at 12:00 with players from the Arizona Ladyhawks and the Sacramento Screamers joining with female players from Las Vegas to form two teams to play a 12-a-side game.

Later in May, on the 21st, Baltimore/ Washington DC will host an Eastern Australian Football League women’s game.

On June 25th, the Denver Lady Bulldogs will host the Minnesota Freeze.

A women’s game is being arranged for July 30th in California between Orange County Bombshells and Sacramento Screamers.

On September 10th, Boston will host an Eastern Australian Football League women’s game. On the other side of the country, another women’s match is being arranged for the same date in San Diego, California, with female players from Sacramento, San Diego and Los Angeles or Orange County taking part.

With the original list of hopeful IC11 attendees having shrunk somewhat, some positive news has come out of Europe with the AFL Switzerland stating that they are still planning on making the trip Down Under this August.

At this point, it looks likely that France and Switzerland will be the only new European nations at the 2011 International Cup, with other nations including Croatia and the Netherlands keen early, but unable to clear financial or logistical hurdles to make it to Australia this time around. Italy were originally hoping to send both men's and women's teams, but eventually decided to only bring their women's side.

Peta Lowry, who is working with both the Swiss men's side and the Italian women's side, says that the Swiss are still very much focussed on getting to Australia in August, with a number of initiatives underway to source funding for the trip.

The Coca Cola PNG Binatangs Under 16 representative team has won their second round clash in the Queensland Under 16 State Championships, defeating the Suncoast Power by 14 points, and remaining undefeated so far. They are now headed for the ‘Grand Final’ of the tournament, taking on the similar unbeaten Gold Coast Stingrays for First place.

Read on for full scores from the tournament so far.

On Wednesday morning, the PNG U16 Binatangs flew out of Jacksons International Airport in Port Moresby, bound for Brisbane. The task ahead, taking on the challenge of the Under 16 QLD state championships. The first round has been played and the Papua New Guinean boys have already had a win.

The AFL media rights bonanza will have all parts of Australian football putting their hands out for money.  International footy volunteers will argue that surely their time has come.  The answer is likely to be yes, to some extent but in a sustainable way.  Trawling through all the media reports we have spotted further reason for hope.

As has been widely reported the AFL has completed its TV rights deal for the next 5 years, scoring a remarkable AUD$1.25 billion (US$1.37 billion, €920 million). The deal requires 9 games a week and is seen as guaranteeing the short term future of the 18 AFL clubs, although some are pointing out not necessarily where those 18 clubs are located (both North Melbourne and Port Adelaide have been suggested as candidates to shift to Tasmania by some reporters, but that seems highly unlikely in the next 5 years).

Even before the clubs had a chance to ask for more money the AFL Players' Association has been running a campaign to secure a host of improvements ranging from player welfare, superannuation, removal of rookie listing of players (expanding full time lists) and a fixed percentage of the AFL TV rights (27% has been mentioned). Of course it would be interesting to see what happens if a future TV deal is for a reduced total; would the players be happy to take a pay cut? Once the the clubs and players are taken care of the cake is suddenly much smaller. The AFL will also probably want to add to their war chest for "winning" the battle for hearts and minds in Greater Western Sydney and the Gold Coast.

It has to be remembered that all these bids will be for the money in the deal above what is spent in the current 5 year AUD$780 million rights, i.e. there is "only" about $94 million per year above the last rights.

But even when the above allocations are made there is no doubt it should leave the AFL with a comfortable margin to expand some of their lower profile projects - and clearly that must include international football.

This past weekend saw an extravaganza of footy in London, as the GB Bulldogs and Irish Warriors continued their preparation for the International Cup and the touring AIS Academy team of rising stars faced the youngsters of the European Legion, drawn from club sides across the continent. Held at the scenic Dulwich College, the occasion was blessed with good footy, bright sun and an enthusiastic crowd of supporters.

The match between the Academy and European Legion, although fairly predictable on the scoresheet - the academy coming off a victory against Geelong’s reserves! - provided a fantastic spectacle of play for the supporters, who really got behind the individual victories that each Legion player enjoyed against their direct opponents.

Tackles, bumps, dodges and the well-earned goals were all greeted with great cheers, and the youngsters forming the Legion team will have picked up new skills from their experience against players we’ll no doubt see on the screen in the not-too-distant-future. From a GB Bulldogs point of view, it was great to see the competition from squad hopefuls Adam Ballard, Danny Armitage, Josh Davey and Sam Brunton.

This report by Adam Bennett, President of AFL Britain. The full squad selected by the Great Britain Bulldogs for the 2011 International Cup is listed below.

The AFL today announced the new TV rights deal that will begin in 2012. Ironically the announcment was delayed by an hour from the AFL's appointed time, when avoiding delayed matches has been part of putting together the terms of this deal. With the introduction of the expansion clubs Gold Coast Suns and GWS Giants the season will now see nine home and away games played each week. The major increase in the amount payed for the rights is due to the extra game content that will now be available to broadcasters.

Foxtel will broadcast all nine games live each week, with Channel 7 showing a minimum of four games each week and Telstra able to broadcast all games live online and through mobile devices each week. Many will not be happy with the pay TV channel having such a big hold on the televising of football though and it remains to be seen how well this will be received overall. But overall it seems the free to air, Telstra and Pay TV viewers will get a better deal.

There will be plenty of hands out for their share of the pie. At the top of the tree will be the AFL clubs and the AFLPA who will look for increases in players' pay salary. Below this will be various leagues and football bodies across the country as well as football development departments. With Australian football growing in participation numbers around the world most of our readers will be hoping for an increase in budget for international development. Given the way this has been done historically it could mean some increases in funding for junior development, elite junior pathway funding, administrative assistance and funding of the International Cup. But it is unlikely that the affects of this will be seen directly at club or league level except where it is a flow on from junior development efforts.

The full announcement of the rights deal can be seen below.

Catalonia's oldest footy club, Belfry Valls, is coming to Madrid on May 7th for a three-way tournament versus the Spanish capital's Madrid Bears and Móstoles Kangaroos clubs.

The event will mark the first occasion that a Catalan team has come to Madrid for a challenge match, and the first time that the Madrileños and Catalans have met outside the EU Cup since the Madrid Bears visited Barcelona back in 2003.

The players from the Bears and Kangaroos came together once again to form the Spain Bulls last month for a friendly match against reigning AFL London premiers the Wandsworth Demons. Whilst the Bulls went down to the English power club by 17 points, visiting former Sydney Swans star Brett Kirk was impressed with their tenacity, even pulling on a Spanish jumper for the first half of the match, and writing about the experience here on his blog, Captain Kirk's odyssey.

Prior to this, Kirk had also stopped by Barcelona, taking part in a match with the Lliga de Futbol Australià de Catalunya.