World Footy News

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.

As the European summer approaches, bringing the footy season with it, a few hardy locals and expat Aussies are building new clubs in Scandinavia, adding to the current footy communities of Sweden and Denmark.

South-eastern Sweden has a footy club for the first time, with the Karlskrona Magpies kicking off late last year. In Denmark, half-Danish Aussie Dan Petrolo is working hard to bring the sport to the city of Odense, with some practice matches against other Danish sides in the pipeline.

LEFT: Some of the founding members of the Karlskrona Magpies in late 2010.

The Oceania Under 16 squad has spent the last 4 days leading up to Easter at St Ignatius College at Riverview in Sydney, playing against the best under age talent in NSW. The week began with great promise with a win on day 1, thereafter, the task proved more challenging.

As the week wore on, the results became more one sided. In the first three games, Oceania had managed a total of 15.20 (110) (granted 210 against). However, the last 3 games produced just a further 1.4 (10).

We'll have full match reports of the weekend's matches in London on WFN within a few days, but in the meantime, the AFL's website have a review of the AIS vs European Legion available here.

The AIS-AFL Academy team was, as expected, a very well-drilled and skillful outfit, and far too strong for their young European opposition. However, the Europeans can take some encouragement that in future they might well be able to say that they've played against young men who went on to be stars of the AFL.

Lop-sided matches always stir up passionate debate in international footy, whether it's New Zealand beating India by over 200 points at the IC08, the Convicts pounding a novice Spanish side in Madrid, the French being outclassed by the expat Australians at the annual ANZAC match, or the difficulties faced by local-based regional English clubs in fielding a team to compete against Aussie expat-dominated London sides in the 1990s-era BARFL.

With the discussions about divisional play in the IC11 still ongiong, it's a topic that is sure to keep creating talk.

The Foxtel Cup is proving to be one-sided so far. The series was created to provide pay TV station Foxtel more Australian football games whilst giving the respective top Australian state league clubs a chance to compete against each other. The knockout tournament's reputation suffered a dent before getting started with state league powerhouse the SANFL agreeing to join but its top sides declining the offer, with only the lower teams agreeing, and even then confirming that they would mostly field development sides - one could imagine some of the other clubs will do likewise (North Ballarat's 2 point loss not helped by a similar policy). However it still is interesting to see the different cross-league clubs competing.

The tournament is now well underway, with matches played as curtain-raisers to AFL games. Eight clubs from 7 states and territories are competing, with the first round featuring 8 games spread across March, April and May. Five matches have been decided so far, with:

Northern Territory Thunder (NT) defeated Morningside (QLD) by 15 points
East Perth (WA) defeated North Ballarat (VIC) by 2 points
Williamstown (VIC) defeated Swan Districts (WA) by 37 points
West Adelaide (SA) defeated Ainslie (ACT) by 77 points
Claremont (WA) defeated Clarence (TAS) by 71 points

Remaining round 1 games:

In Vanuatu this Easter weekend, Erakor Village (home of the first AFL footy club in Vanuatu) travelled to Mele for a good Friday footy match. Taking on the newly formed Mele AFL Club in a demonstration game. Fans were advised to get to the Mele ground around 1pm so as to not miss any of the action.

The following report is courtesy of AFL Vanuatu.

Fixtures for the 2011 AFL Women’s National Championships have been announced by the South Australia Women’s Football League. The event will take place in June with games held at four different locations around Adelaide.

Eight teams, representing each state and territory in Australia, will take part in the 5 day competition. The teams will be divided into two divisions. Division 1 includes Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland. Division 2 includes Tasmania, Northern Territory, New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory.

The event will run from June 7th to 11th, and will include a rest day on the 9th. An opening ceremony will be held on the 7th at the City Mazda Stadium, Richmond. The Grand Finals will take place at Gliderol Stadium, Glenelg, on the 11th.

LEFT: South Australia's Danielle Crisp pulls away from a Northern Territory opponent.

Austin Crows wingman Jesse Leos (pictured left with Mark "Bomber" Thompson) has made the trip to Australia this year to play with the Barwon Heads football club in the Bellarine Football Leauge. After some preseason games and his first two regular season games in the reserves, Leos has this week been picked to play in the senior team against Torquay at Torquay.

Country footy crowds are bigger than usual at this time of year particularly Easter/Anzac day holidays coming together and Bells Beach surfing tournament on just down the road, so it should be a good crowd to greet him.

 

You can read all about Jesse's journey so far in his blog Diary of a Redneck Texan Downunder.

The newly reincarnated Birmingham Bears took the first crown in their history last Saturday, April 16, as they won the AFL Britain Central & North-West League Lightning Cup, held in Hull.

The league’s inaugural Lightning Cup, which marked exactly 3 weeks until regular season start, featured 6 of the 7 teams in the division with Huddersfield Rams, Manchester Mosquitoes, Nottingham Scorpions and Sheffield Thunder being joined by newcomers Birmingham Bears and Hull Mariners.

Thanks to Tim Smith from the Birmingham Bears for this report.