World Footy News

An interesting article in the Irish Times notes the absence of the International Rules series this northern autumn and how it has left a hole in the GAA calendar. The AFL pulling out of this year's planned series, despite it being the GAA's 125th anniversary year, came as a shock in the emerald isle. In the article Sean Moran goes on to analyse the reasons and implications, including how as the game "softened" in attempts to rein in the perceived over physicality of the Aussies, maintaining AFL fans' interest became more difficult.

Nonetheless as WFN stories show, IR matches continue to tick over at women's, masters' and amateur club level around the globe. And the 2008 series seemed to come up with the best refinement of rules thus far for bringing out skillful, competitive play on both sides. Perhaps the hybrid is slowly fading or maybe it is simply lying dormant waiting for another northern autumn or southern spring for interest to bloom again?

Carlton today signed the 17 year old PNG speedster Peter Labi who is currently 189cm tall and weighs 84kg. Labi was a member of the PNG Mosquitoes that claimed the International Cup at the MCG in 2008 and in 2009 has been playing with AFLQ side Mt Gravatt after three years of football in PNG.

This season he has played 13 games for Mt Gravatt including three finals and playing on the losing side in their grand final loss to Morningside. He also played five games with the Brisbane Lions' reserves as a top-up player.

The Western Bulldogs have today arrived in Fiji, in readiness for Friday's launch of the AFL Fiji, also to be attended by Port Adelaide's Fijian-born star David Rodan.

The Bulldogs are undertaking a further round of trials of local talent, hoping to recruit a third Fijian rookie to the club.

The new AFL Fiji organisation has already undertaken some scouting and school development clinics, with view to having a team ready for the Oceania junior cup to be hosted in Fiji in December.

For more on developments in Fiji, see Bulldogs to launch AFL from the Fiji Times and Dogs Continue Fiji talent hunt from afl.com.au.

Since the year 2000, an annual International Rules series has been contested between the Australian Wombats (AFL Masters representative squad) and a team from the GAA Masters competition. This year’s match will be held in a few weeks in Ireland. En route to Ireland, the Australian team, which includes former AFL players, will spend a night in Dubai and attend AFL International Masters Sportsman’s Night 2009, a fundraiser for AFL Middle East. The function will take place of 21 October 2009; tickets are still available but need to be pre-purchased. For further details contact cameron [at] aflmiddleeast [dot] com.

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Highlights of the Denver Bulldogs vs Seattle Grizzlies Grand Final courtesy of USFootyNews.com.

The Dublin Demons this year won their second consecutive ARFLI premierership title with a convincing victory against their heated rivals the South Dublin Swans by 10.9.69 to 4.11.35. Having led the ladder all season the Demons justified their favourite tags with an excellent all round performance that saw them open up an early lead that they never relinquished.

Denver Bulldogs have won the US Nationals for the seventh time since the year 2000. They won a close, hard fought Grand Final match in Mason, Ohio against Seattle Grizzlies 2.5 (17) to 2.2 (14).

In other results Calgary won Division 2, Dallas won Division 3, Ohio Valley/St Louis won Division 4 and Calgary Blue won the Women's final.

DIVISON 1 FINAL
Denver 2.5 (17) defeated Seattle 2.2 (14)

Paul Roos Medal for Best & Fairest - Brendan Feddema of Denver
Coopers Medal for Most Consistent - Jeff Purcell of Seattle & Clayton Holmes of Vancouver
Hayden Kennedy Medal for Grand Final Umpiring - Greg Everett & Stephen Arnott
Geoff Cann Medal for MVP in Final - Dominic Kennedy of Denver

Other final results below.

The 2009 USFooty National Championships kicked off Friday in Mason, Ohio with the club administrators conference. Some great sessions were presented to club representatives to take back to their team mates to help grow the sport in the US. The Australian Exchange program for American players to country footy clubs and universities in Western Australia has shown great growth since we heard about it last year. WFN scribe Chris Adams also presented on his success with running structured local kids clinics in the summer in DC - a great blueprint for clubs wanting to start out with AusKick/USFootyKids. Former WFN correspondent Jake Anson from Calgary also had a great presentation on the success of recruiting and player development for the Calgary Kookaburras womens side - from their growth and success, it seems they have a great blueprint on how to develop womens footy.

38 teams are taking part in the tournament over the weekend. The Day 1 results are posted below. Denver and Seattle looking strongest in their Division 1 pools.

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.