World Footy News

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.

The following is an extract from the article The Amateur: Australian Rules Football, Yet Another Metaphor For Life by Spencer Hall in series where he tries various sports for the first time.  For his first taste of Aussie rules he joined Westside Bombers in the Atlanta metro footy league.  The article appeared on the SB Nation website.  The full article can be found here.  

 Everyone adjourns for beer. I turn in my jersey. I touch my knees, both still functioning. Ears: intact, and still sitting firmly attached to my head. The violence promised by reels of AFL Youtube maim-montage never materialized. Oh, one player was firmly decleated on a boundary kick, sure, with our best defender running through him like an enraged PCP-smoking hobo through a wet cardboard box. It looked magnificent and sounded even better,  the rush of air flying out of the poor victim's lungs followed by the audible thud of him hitting the grass.

Head Coaches Stuart Grills and Jaye Macumber have named their initial twenty five players to represent Canada in the Men's Division for the 2011 International Cup in Melbourne and Sydney this coming August.

These men have been working extremely hard since November 2010 and are thrilled to have the opportunity to represent their country at this International tournament. The players for the five remaining spots will be chosen by the end of May.

Congratulations again to the twenty five players from across the country.

In this installment, we check in with the Beijing Bombers, the China Reds' tour to Thailand for the ANZAC clash, a new club starting up in Qingdao, and Jiaming Pi's blog on the SBS Chinese language website, promoting footy to the Australian Chinese community.

The following is a media release from the AFLPA.

AFL Players are supporting the families of deceased and wounded Australian soldiers by donating 17 jumpers – signed by stars such as Gary Ablett Jr, Adam Goodes, Matthew Pavlich and Nick Riewoldt – to be raffled on Anzac Day in Afghanistan. Each team jumper has been signed by the club captain (except Brisbane Skipper Jonathan Brown, who was in hospital at the time) and contains a message of support for the Australian Mentoring Task Force 2 (MTF-2), based in Uruzgan Province in southern Afghanistan.

Each jumper is being raffled, with half the proceeds going to Legacy and half going to the MTF-2 Benevolent Fund, which directly supports the families of soldiers from the Task Force who have been killed or injured in the line of duty. Organisers hope the raffle will raise more than $20,000, with $10,000 already raised over the space of a few days. Team captains from all National Rugby League teams have also donated jumpers for the raffle.