World Footy News

The AFL has announced a restructure of Victorian football as part of building a stronger national organization designed to support and grow the game at all levels.

AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou said former Essendon chief executive Peter Jackson had been appointed executive chair of a new entity, AFL Victoria Ltd., to manage the AFL’s investment in the development of the game in Victoria.

Under the restructure, the new entity will become directly aligned with the AFL. Mr Demetriou said the restructure would allow the AFL to more effectively support the game in Victoria as it has with AFL Queensland and AFL NSW/ACT.

Swans defender Tadhg Kennelly has had knee surgery today. Kennelly twisted his knee in a training mishap in Ireland last week and immediately returned to Australia for assessment.

While many readers may find it unusual that an AFL player is doing this sort of unsupervised training - and in fact some players have contracts that forbid this sort of thing - it is quite common for Irish players to not only train while in Ireland but to compete in Gaelic football matches in the offseason.

Collingwood today officially listed Irishman Paul Cribbin of County Kildare with pick 81 in the Rookie Draft. Cribbin has been training with the club for some weeks after signing a two year contract with the 2010 Premiers earlier this year.

Despite rumors of the return of Cribbin's countryman Marty Clarke to Collingwood through the year this has not eventuated. But the club and Clarke have left the door open for it to possibly happen in the 2012 season.

The Sydney Swans have added to their band of foreign legion players, picking up South African-born Eugene Kruger in today’s AFL rookie draft.

Kruger, 19, has been training with the Swans and has been outstanding on the pre-season running track, blitzing the field in the 3km time trial two weeks ago. He lives in Sydney and has played Australian football seriously for less than two years, lining up for local side, East Coast Eagles.

The USAFL will be holding a training camp for the USA Revolution and USA Freedom teams in Austin, Texas the weekend of February 25-27.

The Revolution Coaches will be focusing on the preparation of players for the International Cup in Australia, in August 2011, and the camp will be used to finalize the squad for this tournament. Attendance at the camp is by invitation only. This camp is the culmination of a 2 year recruiting process implemented by Revolution Coach Matt Bishop and he is confident a very strong squad will be making the journey to Australia.

The NZ Hawks youth team has been named and will play against up to 7 countries from the Pacific region including an indigenous team from Australia, The Flying Boomerangs. The Kiwis will be looking to improve after last year's very raw squad finished 3rd, behind Nauru and surprise winners Tonga. Competition will be tough with the 2009 tournament favourite, Papua New Guinea, keen to play well after ultimately being unable to attend last time.

Once again talent scouts from the AFL clubs will be in attendance in search of potential International Scholarships from the participants aged between 14 to 17.

At this time of year, Aussie Rules clubs the world over are getting back into off-season training. Major AFL Clubs take the opportunity to use this time to go abroad and hone themselves in different environments, Collingwood go to Colorado to work at altitude, this year North Melbourne went to the colder climate of Utah and Richmond are currently in New Zealand working on fitness and team building via some extreme sports.

This weekend’s weather in Scotland afforded the Glasgow Sharks the chance to train in some unusual conditions as well. With at least 4 inches of Snow covering the Sharks regular training venue at Glasgow Green, this Sunday’s session was less ball work and more snowball work!!

After years of debate as to whether winning the FIFA soccer World Cup would damage Australian football in Australia, diverting funding, attention and prestige, the issue has been instantly rendered null and void until at least 2026 (or longer if the bidding rules remain the same). FIFA delegates gathered in Zurich to cast their votes for 2018 and 2022 and the winners were Russia and Qatar. Neither bid was widely considered kindly, although Qatar was a favourite amongst some betting agencies, but at the end of the day the voting is not necessarily about which bid is best for the sport, rather it is about convincing a small group of generally elderly men who possibly have a diverse set of motivations.

It will be interesting to see if the anti-AFL recriminations begin, with the AFL blamed for delays in securing stadia agreements, and also whether there is a knee-jerk government reaction declaring that Australia will immediately bid again for 2026. With the giant China looming, if they wish to host in 2026 then that could block out Australia for the next 30 years, depending on the ever changing FIFA rules. As pointed out to this author in comments below, current rules prevent the same region hosting in the next 2 periods (I knew that) and Qatar is in the Asian confederation (I didn't know that). So perhaps 2034 is the earliest, and if China got that, then 2046.

Perhaps Australian football would have managed to showcase Aussie Rules to the world during a hosted soccer World Cup, but rather than an opportunity lost one can't help but to think that a far greater risk to the sport has been averted. Let's hope the recriminations are not too strong and for our part, those that were not keen on Australia hosting soccer's biggest event need to moderate our relief, being sensitive to the many Australians who had their heart set on a different outcome.

The AFL has confirmed the dates and locations for the 2011 International Cup.

We previously reported that Melbourne and Sydney were likely, and Queensland venues were also a chance, though less likely. The AFL have now stated that Melbourne and Sydney are locked in, but there will be no Queensland matches.

IC11 Competition Manager Josh Vanderloo stated in a letter to competing nations that:

"After considering requests from participating countries who nominated along with the recently released 2011 AFL fixture, we have made some changes to the scheduling of the 2011 International Cup.

We are excited to confirm the tournament will be played in both Sydney and Melbourne from Friday August 12 through to Saturday August 27, 2011.

We are committed to building on IC08 and through some enhancements to the tournament designed to reflect our expanding international vision, we believe we can deliver a better overall experience for all participating nations.

To date, the response from the International football community has been outstanding with an estimated 24 countries likely to take part in this celebration of our great game. In addition, we can also confirm that IC11 will include a female division for the first time".

On Saturday November 20th, the Toulouse Crocodiles hosted four other teams from around Spain and France for the 2010 Mediterranean Cup.

The tournament saw the debut of the Marseille Dockers, who clashed with Toulouse, the Perpignan Tigers, the Bordeaux Bombers and Spanish side the Madrid Bears.

The sides met each other once each over the course of an intense day's play, with the home town Crocs finishing undefeated. Second place went to the Bordeaux Bombers, with the Madrid Bears taking out third.

Marseille achieved a win over Perpignan, finishing with a 1-3 record from their first-ever outing.

For more information on footy in France, see FootballAustralien.com.

The USAFL today announced on http://www.usafl.com that Leigh Barnes, former Executive Board Member and long time USAFL player, umpire, coach and administrator as the new national women's team coach who will be the coach of the Freedom for the women's division of the 2011 Internantional Cup in Australia.

The statement reads as follows “We are extremely pleased to have Barnesy on-board as the Freedom’s Head Coach, he brings with him many years of playing and coaching experience and a good nature that will enable him to bond well from day one with the team”, says Rich Mann, USAFL President.

AFL chief Andrew Demetriou has confirmed that the League Commission is seriously investigating playing AFL regular season matches outside Australia for the first time.

The announcement was made at the AFL industry conference held on the Gold Coast in mid-November.

Cities mentioned by Mr Demetriou as potential hosts were Mumbai, Los Angeles and Shanghai, with mention also made of plans by Melbourne FC to repeat their Shanghai exhibition match experiment after the 2011 AFL season.

For more on this story, see AFL flags playing premiership matches overseas on afl.com.au or AFL wants to go global from Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper.