World Footy News

For the first time, all five Scandinavian countries hosted regular season footy in 2010, in addition to hosting the first-ever full-field European Championships in Australian Football.

Whilst Denmark and Sweden remain the most established leagues in Scandinavia, the Icelanders and Finns are also playing premiership seasons, and the clubs in Norway are laying the groundwork for league play in future.

Read on for the winners and losers in domestic footy around Scandinavia in 2010.

The Toulouse Crocodiles have recently aligned with AFL club Hawthorn, in the process changing their name to the Toulouse Hawks. Hawthorn have relationships with a number of international clubs and leagues, with the Zagreb Giants becoming the Zagreb Hawks and the Phoenix Scorpions rebranding as the Arizona Hawks a few years ago, and more recently the New Zealand AFL taking on the Hawks moniker for their national team.

As part of the arrangement, the Toulouse Hawks will play their future matches in the silver jumpers of the New Zealand Hawks.

The six-team French National League recently kicked off their 2010-11 season, with a Northern Division comprising Paris, Strasbourg and Bordeaux, and a Southern Division with Toulouse, Perpignan and newcomers the Marseille Dockers.

Pictured at left are Cyril Mahamad and Quentin Delaville from Toulouse in their club's new gear. For more on the new partnership between Toulouse and Hawthorn, visit this article on the Hawthorn FC website.

As we come to the end of 2010 worldfootynews.com has its annual reflection on the year gone by. We've been in the happy position over our existence to be able to report on 6 to 7 years of excellent growth in international Australian football. This year has been no exception. And that's not spin presented to try to give the impression footy is on an upward curve.

There is no question that, from a modest base, Aussie Rules has been doing very well; not always exploding in numbers, and with plenty more to do, but very positive indeed, after a rather sluggish first century or so.  Instead of going into depth on all the various achievements, this year we'll just list some of the highlights that come to mind from across the year, as well as some more dubious events.

Of course because international footy is now so diverse and widely spread, even with around 500 stories in 2010 we're bound to miss some significant achievements, either on a larger scale or great local happenings.  Did we miss something special?  Got your own favourite?  Let us know by posting a comment on this story.

A great video on Youtube discussing women's footy in Italy, including quality footage from the match between Ireland and Italy in Parabiago (Milan), Italy, as part of the European Cup 2010 in September.

 [youtube:boCRch_9R1Y]

Thanks to keyframe.tv.it and australiaitalia.it.

See also Italian girls share love of AFL

Please note that http://worldfootynews.com has been undergoing site maintenance from December 24th through to December 27th.

It is now complete. Please let us know if you encounter any problems.

For a bit of festive fun we have for your viewing pleasure a recent Fosters beer commercial from the UK with a cameo appearance by the Sherrin, reinforcing the global association of Aussie Rules football and Australia. Seasons greeting to you all.

The following was written by Peter Schwab and comes to us courtesy of US Footy News

I have just returned from a visit to the US with my eldest son William where amongst the sites of New York, an NFL game in Philadelphia and an ice hockey match in Washington where we witnessed one of the game’s current greats Alex Ovechkin play, we also had the opportunity to assist at a local Auskick in Washington DC.

Chris is a quietly spoken man with a passion for the game and a bigger passion to introduce it to the local children. His 10 year old son CJ is also a motivating factor for Chris to keep the game as strong as he can in a foreign environment, because it allows CJ the opportunity to learn and play the game.

Over the last decade Australian football has taken big strides in laying down some roots internationally. Many of those started off as tiny projects to use footy to bring some fun to poor communities; some such projects remain at that scale and whilst never likely to make big headlines are great initiatives as they are. One current program is being run by expat Aussie Simon Corcoran in a remote area of Peru.

worldfootynews.com had a chat to Simon about the people and the footy there and where his dreams would see it all go.

Kevin Sheedy and his GWS Giants are continuing their quest to uncover talent of African origin. A recent story revealed Sheedy checking out tall talent at the Sudanese Australian basketball championships at Cambridge Park in western Sydney, and another story focussed on the athleticism and football ability of youngster Zarchariah Sesay, originally from Sierra Leone.

Sheedy also reiterated what he has often stated, which is his desire (and now intent) to chase US basketball talent. "Some 4500 basketballers go through the college system in America but only about 60 get drafted".

With the backing of his new club it will be intriguing to see the ethnic makeup of the GWS Giants in their first few years in the AFL. It could just become the sport's greatest advertisement for enticing future generations of migrants to the game, not to mention the sport's slowly growing international following.

Sketchy details have come to hand that show as expected that PNG have taken out 1st place. However, the other matches have provided an ordering that probably was not to be expected heading into the tournament.

At the time, the two undefeated sides, PNG and Tonga met on Saturday in the last of the pool matches. PNG won and won convincingly, restricting Tonga to just one goal whilst accumulating 7 of their own. Early reports indicated that the First Place final was much closer with Tonga improving their offensive effort, but the final scores we've received since then show that PNG was still a long way ahead of the field.

PNG 8.5 (45) def Tonga 1.1 (7)

In the 3rd place playoff - Fiji maintained the tournament form by nudging out Nauru.

Fiji (35) def Nauru (25)

For Fiji, Jeffrey Pauli was awarded "player of the tournament" by Fiji Power coaching staff.

In the final match, the 5th place play off it appears as though tournament debutant, the Solomon Islands have reversed the earlier result and managed to get up over the more fancied New Zealand. WFN is still awaiting scores for this match.

Also, details have been hard to come across for Saturday morning's 2nd outing of the Flying Boomerangs. Todays News Ltd is running a story on Andrew McLeod that states :

The Boomerangs easily defeated an Oceania team last week but were outmuscled by a bigger and older South Pacific representative team on Saturday.

The AFL's recently announced Champions League will provide the top teams from across Australian states (below the AFL) the chance to compete before a national TV audience on Foxtel, albeit given Foxtel's reduced market penetration compared with free-to-air TV.

But sadly for the concept's first year (2011) one of the major competing leagues will instead put forth its bottom clubs for the contest. The SANFL agreed to the Champions League but only on the grounds that it would offer three spots to its clubs, starting from the top finishers in 2010, but would not force them to play. A cascade of declined offers followed, resulting in South Australia likely to field 3 of its 4 bottom sides, from its 9 club competition.

The rebuff was expected, as most of the SANFL clubs had made it clear that the likely prize money on offer was inadequate and there were issues with clashing sponsors, and the last thing vulnerable state league sides can afford is to make a loss from such a venture. With SANFL player payments thought to be higher than most other state leagues outside of the AFL the requirements to satisfy SANFL clubs is higher. Just as important was that the clubs of course will continue to focus, as they have for over 130 years, on winning the local premiership. By sacrificing their byes during the season they would place themselves at a disadvantage compared with their local rivals - playing 3 or 4 extra games in a season, plus travel, is a large additional load. There is also a risk that the telecast of matches would be in direct competition with the state league coverage on ABC TV.

Matches on Saturday, Day 5 of the AFL Under 16s Oceania Cup began with Fiji Power up against New Zealand at 1pm, followed by Nauru vs Solomon Islands and finally PNG vs Tonga in the top of the table clash, the President's XVIII having the bye.

This report is based exclusively from the AFL Fiji press release for Day 5. Full credit to the professionalism and organisation shown by the folk from AFL Fiji. Again, Dr Robert Wolfgramm (AFL Fiji chairman) is presenting a fine public image AFL Fiji.