World Footy News

In a Grand Final re-match from last season, the perennial Auckland AFL champions, University Blues, squared off against last year’s opponent, the Waitakere Magpies. Despite many years in the AAFL competition Waitakere had yet to win a flag but with the Club supplying a large contingent to the Senior NZ Hawks in recent years it has only been a matter of time.

These were 2010’s top two teams. One win each during this season’s regular rounds, plus a better for and against percentage, gave Waitakere top spot on the ladder and bragging rights over Uni entering the finals. However when both teams met again in the semi finals the Blues won very well and deservedly went straight through to the grand final, the Magpies had to pick themselves up to play against North Shore in the preliminary final in a week. A great win over North Shores Tigers saw the Waitakere Magpies through to another grand final against the foe.

The AFL today announced the creation of a state-league based knockout competition from 2011 onwards -- the FOXTEL Cup -- which will showcase the quality of state league football across the country.

AFL General Manager National and International Development David Matthews said the AFL had now concluded all arrangements for the new competition, in partnership with FOX SPORTS, which will bring 16 teams from the various state leagues across the country to play in a unique knockout competition which will be televised exclusively by FOX SPORTS and supported by naming rights sponsor FOXTEL.

RICHMOND coach Damien ‘Dimma’ Hardwick looked at his playing list last week as he decided who would play for the Tiges at Alice Springs against the Indigenous All Stars (later cancelled due to cyclone Yasi), and there was one player he really wanted to let loose.

As recently covered on WFN, two of PNG’s young champs are international rookie listed by the Tigers, and have been training at Punt Road. Gideon Simon and Nathan Malbak, a pair of 16-year-olds, were with the Tigers for just a week. So impressive had Simon been that Hardwick felt he was ready to mix it with some of the league's best.

Read Eye of the Tiger on PNG for more.

Of the potential new sides at the 2011 International Cup, the newest to footy in general are the Swiss, with the newly-formed AFL Switzerland working hard to find enough sponsorship to make it to the tournament.

A few previous unsuccessful attempts to start teams in Lucerne and Geneva aside, footy has only been played in Switzerland since 2010, when the club in Lugano was created to compete in the inaugural AFL Italia premiership season. Team Switzerland, drawn from the Lugano squad, made its debut at the 2010 Euro Cup.

Switzerland's second club, to be based in the country's largest city Zurich, will hold its first training session at the end of February under the leadership of Jono Newman. Newman spoke to WFN about the national team's chances Down Under in August.

LEFT: Switzerland at the 2010 Euro Cup in Parabiago, Italy. Photo courtesy of Daniela Scalia.

The AFL Europe this week announced that the 2011 9-a-side Euro Cup has been awarded to the city of Belfast, Northern Ireland.

This will be the first time the cup has been held in Ireland, and the Australian Rules Football League of Ireland believe it will serve as something of a preview to the next full-field European Championships, to be held in Dublin in 2013.

The ARFLI, although a powerhouse of European footy, are relative newcomers to the Euro Cup, not sending an official side until 2010. Prior to this, the Irish Exiles, drawn from Irishmen playing in other leagues around Europe, competed at the 2009 tournament.

Formerly known as the EU Cup, the Euro Cup is the biggest annual event on the European footy calendar, and is the main opportunity to get a large section of the community together.

Readers can contact eurocup@afleurope.org for more details.

33 men's and women's teams have been nominated for the 2011 Australian Football International Cup, to be staged in Sydney and Melbourne in August.

The long list of possible newcomers in the men's competition is Indonesia, Italy, France, Vanuatu, Iceland, Fiji, East Timor, Croatia, Switzerland and depending on definition, Tonga, which competed in the multi-cultural section in 2008. At this stage all previous competing nations have nominated, except Spain (2005).

For the first time there will be a women's tournament, possibly featuring Ireland, PNG, USA, Italy, Canada and a combined Multicultural & Indigenous team.

Read on for the full men's list.

AFL Europe has announced that the European squad to take on the AIS-AFL Academy team in London during Easter on April 23rd will be known as the European Legion.

The title results from a poll conducted on their website, narrowly beating the Titans and Stars.

The elite young academy players will also visit Italy and Turkey during their tour. See AIS-AFL Academy to tour Europe in 2011 for more details.

The European Legion will be composed mainly of U-21 Players from the various European Leagues with a limited number of U-23 players to add senior experience. The team will be coached by former Melbourne Player and AFL Europe Commissioner Glenn Lovett. For those interested in having players considered for selection or for players interested in finding out the selection criteria you can e-mail team.manager@afleurope.org.

Over the last 25 years former AFL Commissioner Colin Carter has been one of the influential people at AFL HQ pushing for game development and an international presence (see Carter returns to Geelong). After leaving the Commission he returned to Geelong's board in 2008 and has now taken over from Frank Costa as the Cats' President.

It will be interesting to see if Carter will combine his position and his enthusiasm for international footy to ensure Geelong gets behind the game's spread. International Australian football is already known at Geelong, such as through the goodwill of player James Bartel and the company of outgoing President Frank Costa has been a great supporter of football in South Africa through sponsorship of FootyWILD.

This year, there will be some young Canadian talent joining the Hampton Rovers in Melbourne's VAFA. Four recent recruits to the Ontario Australian Football League will be heading down under to play the 2011 season in suburban footy.

The journey started back in October 2009, when Jaye Macumber, coach of the Central Blues AFC in Canada and current coach of Team Canada, was looking to recruit some new, young talent for his football club. After contacting Canadian company The Aussie X, he was able to arrange for his club to participate in a week long program at a local high school in Toronto, Neil McNeil HS.

With PNG the AFL Oceania Youth Cup holders AFLPNG are certainly not sitting back and resting on their laurels. With the appointment of the new Director of the AFLPNG Academy Moses Kar, a expanded intake of students awarded scholarships to the De La Salle Football Academy and two of their stars at the Youth Cup spending a week training with AFL Club Richmond football remains very much to the forefront.

The relationship between AFLPNG and De La Salle Secondary School has strengthened with AFLPNG awarding scholarships to 27 students for 2011. Building on 2010 whereby 17 boys attended De La Salle on AFLPNG scholarships, De La Salle has supported the development of the game by allowing AFL to be an integral part of the boys' curriculum.

The Academy scholarship recipients come from throughout PNG and have made incredible improvements within their first year. The Academy has achieved great success in both the Oceania Cup held in Tonga and the Australian U/16 Championships representing South Pacific. They also performed admirably against the indigenous Flying Boomerangs in December last year.

After being previously invited many times to view the talent in NZ, Kevin Sheedy, AFL visionary and coach of Israel Folau and the Greater Western Sydney team, will attend a combined training session involving the New Zealand Under 16s and Auckland Under 20s representative teams on Sunday, January 30th.

The training session will take place at Parrs Park, Oratia in Auckland's Western Suburbs, with the session starting at 10.00am and followed by a barbeque and question time with Kevin Sheedy at 11.45am. Sheedy will be available to address the media at 12.30pm.

Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper reported on 29.1.11 that Sheedy had expressed an interest in recruiting two members of the NZ AFL Oceania Youth Cup squad which was played in Tonga during December 2010. Athletic key defender Charlton Brown and strong marking flanker Brandon Sucu are known to be on GWS's radar.

Sheedy said that "With more than 10,000 youngsters playing Aussie Rules in NZ, there was some outstanding talent there to be discovered."

Former Sydney Swans' captain Brett Kirk and his family are about to embark on his round the world odyssey promoting the 2011 International Cup. The International Cup Ambassador begins his six-month world tour today, Friday, January 28.

He will travel to more than 15 nations that will participate in the 2011 International Cup in August. His first stop is Sri Lanka. He will then continue to India, South Africa, Europe and North America.

“I look forward to working with and visiting nations which have embraced our game and are preparing for the International Cup,” Brett said.

Follow Brett Kirk’s Odyssey on Twitter, Facebook and the web.