World Footy News

The AFLNZ U20 National Provincial Championships are to be played this weekend in Wellington, March 13th and 14th 2010, at Hutt Park. These will comprise the Best U20 players from the Auckland, Canterbury and Wellington provinces with the NZ U16 side, who played at the Oceania U16 Championships in Fiji during December 2009, also involved.

As expected, Papua New Guinea has contributed a large number of nominations (17) to the initial Pacific squad to compete in the AFL NAB Under 16 Championships in western Sydney in July this year. The original squad was named after the Oceania Youth Cup in Fiji in December 2009, but PNG were a late withdrawal. With a very successful junior program including the Coca Cola Pathway, the addition of future PNG Mosquito stars to the team will strengthen it considerably.

The AFL has also confirmed that the squad, variously described as the Oceania, Pacific or Pacific Islands team, will in fact be called the South Pacific, better reflecting its makeup.

The current squad (and likely final numbers in brackets) is made up of:

Papua New Guinea 17 (8), New Zealand 9 (4), Tonga 8 (4), Samoa 6 (4), Nauru 6 (3), Fiji 6 (2) for a total of 52 in the squad, to be trimmed to a final 25.

The South Pacific coach has not been named yet. Former Sydney Swan Michael O'Loughlin will coach the World XVIII, consisting of players from outside the South Pacific zone. More details of those nominations tomorrow.

AFL legend Peter Daicos has agreed to be Gateshead Miners ARFC patron for 2010. Commonly known as the Macedonian Marvel because of his parents' place of origin, the mulleted Daicos is known as one of the most exciting footballers of all time - with an incredible knack to score goals from seemingly impossible angles, and at crucial game-defining moments.

The Gateshead Miners were formed in 2009, and compete in England's Northern Premiership against clubs from the cities of Newcastle, Hartlepool, Durham and Middlesbrough.

Today's The Australian newspaper reported that the AFL's Western Bulldogs are pushing hard to take matches for premiership points to New Zealand's capital city Wellington. The deal would see the Bulldogs play two home matches at Wellington's Basin Reserve, possibly as early as next year.

The Dogs currently sell two home games interstate, one to Darwin and the other to Canberra. The idea is to take those games to the New Zealand capital and attempt to build some sort of regular sporting and cultural event for the city around the idea of premiership points being fought over on foreign soil.

Bulldogs' chief executive Campbell Rose outlined the proposal in a direct letter to NZ prime minister John Key, with endorsement from the AFL.

The full story can be read at Bulldogs push for games in New Zealand.

The Dulwich Dragons will this year enter the AFL London's Conference (2nds) Division, after playing in the Social (3rds) League since their formation in 2008.

Club stalwart Alistair Chisholm explains that the Dragons were created by two footy enthusiasts who decided the London league needed to spread away from the traditional Aussie expat areas in the city's west.

Two years later, the Dragons have over sixty players on their squad list and are planning on playing in both the 2nd and 3rd divisions on the AFL London, after a strong showing in 2009 despite some early fixturing hiccups.

WFN has now completed its Country Snapshots section for Europe.

Other completed regions are Africa, Oceania, the Middle East and North, Central and South America. They are available from the pulldown menu above titled Countries.

Over the coming months we hope to finish the last region - Asia.

As always, let us know if there are any significant errors or omissions. We do realise that the Census data (2004) is well out of date, and there is some more recent data available. We'll hopefully address that at the end of the year.

The AFL Middle East Grand Final "Prematch" was played last week, with the Heat edging out the Falcons in a thriller. Just two points separated the top two teams at the final siren.

The readers of USFootyNews.com have chosen the 2009 Coopers Goal and Mark of the Year. Congratulations to Seattle and Portland's Martin Coventry on kicking the Goal of the Year and to Calgary's Dane Rolfe for taking the Mark of the Year.

Portland Power and Seattle Grizzly, Martin Coventry, took out the 2009 Coopers Brewery USFootyNews.com Goal of the Year. Thanks to all the USFootyNews.com readers, Portland and Seattle fans for voting! Thanks also to Coopers Brewery for providing the prizes.

Although Coventry's huge kick in the 2009 USFooty National Championship was not enough to win the National Championship, it did win Goal of the Year. The kick beat out a lovely pocket snap by Revo and Baltimore Washington Eagle RJ Wheelock and a nice left footer from OC Bomber Colter Alison.

Continuing the explosive growth of new clubs in England, the Guildford Crows are warming up for the 2010 season, and are on the lookout for friendly matches against other southern clubs to get underway.

Located around halfway between London and England's south coast, Guildford is the traditional centre of County Surrey and is only a few kilometers from the town of Woking, which was home to the old BARFL's Thames Valley Magpies in the early 1990s.

Leading the Crows is Tom Drake, a Briton who discovered Australian rules football while traveling in Australia, joined the Aberdeen Dingoes while studying in Scotland, and went on to represent the Scotland twice in 2009.

Among the sides running out onto Whitten Oval in this year's Harmony Cup will be Team Israel, who will be hoping to regain the title they won at 2004's inaugural Multicultural Cup.

Although the Australian Jewish community is not often associated with producing star players, it has provided us with such high profile off-field personalities as the late Carlton president Dick Pratt, Melbourne FC's merger saviour Joseph Gutnick, current Bulldogs chief David Smorgon and colourful 80s-era Sydney Swans owner Dr Geoffrey Edelsten.

Fans of international footy will be familiar with the Peres Peace Team, a side of Israeli and Palestinian players that came together for the 2008 International Cup with the support of the Peres Centre for Peace and a number of Australian business supporters. A social Aussie rules scene also exists in Israel, profiled by WFN in the article Footy in Israel - From St Kilda to the Dead Sea way back in 2005.

Coordinating the team this year is Michael Goldberg, a veteran of Israeli social footy and a member of Melbourne's "Shleppers". Goldberg spoke to WFN about the side's preparations.

The US Revolution kicked off their 2010 season with a winter camp in Austin, Texas. New head coach, Matt Bishop, was keen to get the team together with a series of camps throughout the year culminating with the big game against the Canadian Northwind in Toronto in early August.

There were a number of new faces looking to impress the Revo coaching staff, including Minnesota's big man, Andrew Werner. Werner spent much of 2009 playing footy in the Western Australian country leagues and is looking forward to contributing to the Revos.

No you didn't read that wrong, South America. While the AFL club the West Coast Eagles have been involved in footy development in the African nation of South Africa, it is now the South American continent that is drawing their attention.

Eagles Chief Trevor Nisbett told www.foxsports.com.au "There seems to be a lot of talented athletes coming out of there and most of them are obviously playing soccer and rugby," he said. "If we are looking at other players, why not look there. A lot of the guys over there are super well-built and are super athletes. From our point of view it's certainly worth looking at."

The Eagles have linked up with high profile player agent Peter Jess to set up assessment camps. Of the South Americans Jess said "because of the enormous cultural differences he expected South Americans to adapt more quickly to Aussie rules than South Africans. I have outlined to a couple of the club the benefit of South America as a talent pool compared to Ireland," he said.

Regular readers will be aware of the local presences of footy in Argentina, Brazil and Chile.