World Footy News

It is billed as the biggest Australian football tournament in the world. Certainly, it is hard to think of an example comparable to a tournament where about 800 players turn up to play in some 30 mens teams and 8 womens teams across 4 mens divisions and 1 womens division over two days in Mason OH.

Teams arrived into Mason from all over the US and Canada on Friday October 9. Ten years ago, I arrived into Cincinnati (not far from Mason) and was taken aback by seeing a couple hundred footy players playing on two fields for the 1999 USAFL National Tournament. To see five fields across the vast expanse of Heritage Oak Park really is quite something.

The two top seeds for Division I are the Baltimore Washington Eagles, who were ranked #1 in the last USFooty Top 10 poll and the Denver Bulldogs, who have the most National Championships of any team in USFooty. The BW Eagles played 11 games this year, including beating a team made up of Australian sailors from two battleships that came into Baltimore Harbor during the summer. They lost one game by 2 points to the second seed New York Magpies. The Denver Bulldogs have had a pretty quiet year. All their games were on the road with wins over Kansas City and Dallas and losses to San Diego and Orange County.

For more on the tournament and previews of all the divisions go to USFootyNews.com.

While the men’s tournament for 2009 has been put on the back burner, in Sydney the competition between the local GAA and Women's AFL will still go ahead, as two local teams with just as much fight look to take home the Irish Australian’s Memorial Cup.

The NSW GAA team took out the Inaugural game last year and have been training hard to play another dominating match this time around. The team is coached by Kieran Olwell from County Meath, who has picked a strong panel of the best Gaelic Football players in Sydney. Kieran hopes to emulate his Idol Sean Boylan, another Meath native, who coached the Irish team that travelled out last October and beat Australia at the MCG.

The first ever Australian football team to represent Norway has conquered national-rivals Sweden in the inaugural match between the two countries.

The Norway Trolls team, composed half of Norwegian nationals, plus a Czech, a New Zealander, and a group of Australians including one woman, ran out 9.7.61 to 4.6.30 victors over the Elks in icy conditions at Karlstad in Sweden.

Thanks to David Stone from Norway for this report.

The second of the "Hey Hey it's Saturday" reunion shows, curiously seen on a Wednesday night, included a cross to a lady in Atlanta in the US.

Back in September, Hey Hey had called upon Aussie expats via Facebook to have 'Hey Hey' parties. And so, with a whole bunch of ex pat Aussies around her, we saw the camera pan the room and in doing so glimpsed a large "USfooty" sign (around a TV monitor).

This seemed a curious happy coincidence until host Daryl Somers questioned the lady 'hosting' the link about what she did in the US.

It turns out - and apologies I can't recall her name - that she is the IT administrator/manager of USFooty and she provided a pretty good plug for USFooty and the up coming nationals in Mason.

The irony as well is that she'd set up the link such that there was less (no) delay compared to the audio delay with the Hey Hey live-cross to the Black Eyed Peas just over the railway tracks at Rod Laver Arena!!!

She did a great job - if anyone can provide her name and perhaps a link to a youtube of her on Hey Hey would be fabulous.

In probably the last footy of the year for the British representative team, the Danish Vikings were repelled from our shores with far more success than many of our medieval ancestors. In the first match under new Head Coach Mark Pitura, the Bulldogs ground out a well-contested win, 76-63 over their European neighbours.

Along with the Irish Warriors, the Danish and British teams are probably the strongest teams playing the full version of the game in Europe and the efforts to put in place regular fixtures between the nations will really benefit the squads in their preparation for the International Cup in 2011.

New Zealand’s National Provincial Championships will see not only the four leagues competing for representative honours, but also two matches between Victorian Amateur Under 18's against the New Zealand Under 20's.

The four senior leagues from Auckland, Canterbury, Waikato and Wellington will compete for national honours for the first time since September 2007. The past three tournaments have seen Auckland victorious.

The teams have a good quality of coaching staff with all involved having a back ground at an international level for the Falcons. Andrew Congalton, New Zealand captain at both the 2005 and 2008 International Cups will be the Auckland coach, whilst his predecessor from the 2002 campaign, John Jackson has the reigns at Wellington. Jim Lucy, with three International Cups under his belt in a coaching and adminstration level ,will target Waikato towards winning their first game at NPC level and new Canterbury coach Jason Ball was a member of the 2002 International Cup team.

Meanwhile Victorian Amateurs have commenced an inaugural competition involving the Under 18 grade and will send a representative team from the age group to play New Zealand Under 20's in two matches over the weekend. Though the Vic Ammos have a long and proud history at U19 level the Under 18’s are a new competition and their depth available to select from should ensure that the New Zealand outfit is very competitive. Teams will compete for the VAFA/AFL New Zealand Cup for what is hoped to be an ongoing association.

AFL Oceania Manager Andrew Cadzow will be in attendance monitoring the development of the sport and lending assistance as required.

For more see NPC to tie in with visiting Vics.

Hawthorn Football Club, home of Kiwi premiership player Trent Croad, in conjunction with AFL New Zealand have established a competition within Secondary Schools in New Zealand, titled the Hawks Cup. Having recently commenced, it is having a massive impact on the development of AFL within New Zealand.

The development of this competition is highly likely to lead to the sanctioning of the sport by New Zealand Secondary Schools Sports Council. Becoming part secondary sports calendar will allow every secondary school within New Zealand the opportunity to have access to and compete in the Hawks Cup. The Hawthorn Football Club is providing in excess of $50,000 in resources towards and targets participants specifically in years 9 and 10.

This year’s competition will see a number of taster tournaments scheduled over October and November 2009 with teams competing initially in clusters from North Harbour, Waitakere, Auckland, Manukau, Tauranga, Wellington and Porirua. On completion of cluster tournaments, school teams will compete for regional championships including Upper North Island, Lower North Island and Eastern North Island with each regions winner to be awarded the Hawks Cup.

For more on this see Hawks Cup established for Secondary Schools.

Following India’s participation in the 2008 International Cup, it appeared that football had finally established a presence in the world’s second most populous country. An AFL India board had been established; the product of ex-VFL footballer Brian Dixon’s earlier work, and despite no clubs, a small playing group and high costs, it managed to get a team to the International Cup. On top of this, the board seemed to have reasonable plans for growing the game in India, based around the country’s major population hubs.

Yet twelve months later there has been no news from the country. World Footy News set out to investigate why.

AFL Middle East will this Friday begin its second season. All teams from the very successful inaugural season return, joined by the newly formed Bahrain Blues.

The additional team creates a bye in the fixture each week. This season is comprised of seven rounds plus the Grand Final, and will conclude in March 2010. No doubt the Dubai Heat will be keen to continue their dominance of Middle Eastern football and again take home the silverware. The eagerly awaited rematch between last year’s two Grand Finalists is due in Round 3.

Read on for the full fixture.

The England Dragonslayers yesterday defeated the Flying Dutchmen 81-57 in the final of the 2009 EU Cup held in the Croatian town of Samobor, taking their second EU Cup title in succession.

The Dragonslayers were undefeated in the pool rounds, going into the semis against the Spain Bulls. The Bulls had finished top of pool D on percentage, despite having lost to the Irish Exiles by a point earlier that day.

The Dutchmen upset Germany by a point in the pool rounds, placing them in first position in their group. They met host nation Croatia in the semi-final, again pulling off something of an upset to defeat the Knights.

Croatia took out third place in the tournament, comfortably accounting for Spain in the third-place playoff.

Of the newcomers, the Irish Exiles eventually took out 6th place, going down to Scotland in the playoff for fifth. Iceland defeated the EU Crusaders for ninth place, while Italy broke through for their maiden victory over the Czech Republic to avoid the wooden spoon, then defeated Austria in the playoff for 13th. The Andorra Crows were defeated in their Bowl semi final against the Crusaders, finishing 11th overall.

All scores are available on the Footy Record, a full report will be on worldfootynews.com in the next few days.

The Cymru Red Dragons, the Welsh national Australian rules side, will this year hold a two-test series against the Scottish Puffins, both matches played 12-a-side with only nationals of the respective countries eligible to play.

The first match will be played on October 17th in Glasgow, with the second leg being held in Cardiff the following Saturday. The Red Dragons will be eager to record their first win for the year, after being defeated in both matches of the Dragon Cup challenge series against the England Dragonslayers in September. In the first leg played in Cardiff on September 12th, the English came away with a tight 54-49 victory, followed by a comfortable 67-point win the following week in London.

Scotland on the other hand will still be fresh from their EU Cup campaign and will be keen to win at home against the Welsh. Scottish footy is currently in a rebuilding phase, with the Scottish ARFL having restructured in 2009 to include a club in Aberdeen and consolidate the Edinburgh and Glasgow sides. Plans for the future of Australian rules in Scotland include possible clubs in Dundee and Stirling.

The Welsh Australian Rules Football League completed their first full four-team season in 2009, with strong growth in the clubs in South Wales seeing plans laid for a new club in the town of Barry, nicknamed the Vale Warriors and wearing the colours of former SANFL club Woodville.

As indicated in the Friday October 2nd edition of Melbourne newspaper the Herald Sun, it appears an AFL match exhibition match is scheduled to be played in China in October 2010.

The article "China Sold on Footy" mentions AFL identity Kevin Sheedy's trip to Shanghai in July of this year, with Sheedy visiting the proposed stadium in Shanghai and claiming there was "huge potential for the game" in China. The match is scheduled to take place on October 16 between two AFL teams yet to be finalised.

The scheduling of the match in October next year will ensure a busy month of football for the AFL, with Draft Camp, Draft Selection, AFL Trade Week and the expected International Rules Series all expected to take place in October 2010.