World Footy News

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.

The Jakarta Bintangs have for the past 12 years conducted an AFL Grand Final breakfast in Jakarta an event which has grown to be arguably the largest AFL Grand Final function held outside Australia.

This year was no exception though the Bintangs, always the innovators, seem to have pulled off a coup by having the Jakarta Globe as one of their sponsors.

The English language daily newspaper, which has mainstream circulation in Jakarta, had a 4-page liftout on the AFL Grand Final, including full teams, analysis and predictions along with a write-up of the Bintangs' current progress in developing the game locally in Indonesia. I would venture to say that the coverage exceeded that of most of the Sydney and Brisbane dailies.

The piece-de-resistance however, was at the conclusion of the game, where those who were at the Bintangs function in the Shangrila Hotel were presented with a Jakarta Globe Cats 2009 Premiers poster in the style of the late WEG of the Melbourne Herald.

Outstanding!

The draw for the 2009 EU Cup is online, with the 15 sides divided into three pools of four and one of three.

The match schedule and pools are available on the Footy Record here. Scores will be updated via TFR throughout the tournament.

2009 has been a great season for the Paris Cockerels who confirmed their leadership in French footy, winning both the 2009 French Championship and the French Cup. The Parisians remain undefeated in their domestic competition, but are still looking for a win against a non French team.

The French footy community has elected to change to a winter season for 2009-10, featuring Paris, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Montpellier and Perpignan, together with the Andorra Crows. As part of their pre-season warm up, the Cockerels hosted their northern rival, the Flying Dutchmen, for a now traditional pre-season friendly.

Eager to win this game, the Parisians were off to a flying start, leading 4 goals to none after ten minutes, something the Cockerels are not familiar with when it comes to Europeans teams. But the Dutch did not back down and came back to only one goal at quarter time. The second quarter saw the Dutchmen taking the lead, leaving their French opponents only a handful of points behind.

The game got away from the Cockerels in the third quarter with the Dutch kicking 4 goals to none. As usual, the French fought back in the last quarter, kicking 3 goals to one thanks to their Icelandic captain Pall Finnsson, but the Dutch had score too many behinds during the game for the Cockerels to regain the lead. Once again the French had to let the game go to a stronger Dutch team.

The final score: Paris Cockerels 9.8 (62) v Flying Dutchmen 11.21 (87).

The Parisians will now focus on their second pre-season friendly against Danish club the Århus Bombers in October. The 2009-10 French championship is scheduled to begin in November, as is the second Paris International Rules Cup against the French capital's resident GAA club.

In the fourth and final preview of teams for the 2009 EU Cup, WFN spoke to Luke McBride from Germany, Dante Zandveld from the Netherlands, Ronan Moran from the Irish Exiles and Jono Newman from the EU Crusaders.

The Germans are undefeated in international competition this year, having hosted a full-field test against Finland and a 9-a-side clash with the Czech Republic. Whilst coach McBride is an Australian, their full squad are Germans and they will be very keen to show they have what it takes to match it with the best in Europe.

The Dutch have had a year of growth, laying the foundations for a local league to commence next year. Their national side the Flying Dutchmen has played friendlies against the Paris, Rheinland and Berlin clubs during 2008, being undefeated thus far.

The Irish Exiles, a team formed mainly of Irishmen playing Aussie Rules in the UK, could be a very strong side depending who they can bring to Zagreb. Their only match to date was a clash against the 2008 EU Cup champions the England Dragonslayers in early September, where the Irish showed plenty of class in taking out victory.

Finally to the Crusaders, who perhaps fittingly in the first year the EU Cup is held outside the EU, are captained by a resident of non-EU nation Switzerland and are largely made up of citizens of non-EU nation Croatia. The Crusaders have a mix of both experienced hands and newcomers and could surprise a few sides.

With the Crusaders, the tournament will feature 15 sides, with Catalonia and Russia missing from the original 16 sides hoped for by organisers. The Catalans pulled out very recently due to financial issues, whilst the Russian squad, a project of a group of Rugby league players from Moscow, ultimately couldn't make the starting line after much initial promise.

There were a few international connections on Grand Final day for the 2009 AFL season. Once upon a time it was difficult to find any.

Alas for St Kilda's Irish recruit, Colm Begley, the story of his year continued, unable to break into the powerful Saints side for the Grand Final. Nor could James Gwilt, of Papuan heritage.

The day was supposed to allow the finalists of the national Under 16s competition to play on the MCG, but the bad weather saw a late decision to move both divisions to Visy Park. Papua New Guinea's David Meli (pictured), international scholarship listed by Essendon, play well for Queensland in their win over NSW. He was mentioned in a match report as being amongst the best, although not in the match report best players.

Later in the day Canadian Mike Pyke represented Sydney in the traditional half-time sprint and it promised to be intriguing to see how well the big man could run. Sadly he slipped at the starters gun, never recovered and soon disappeared from view. We'll never know how he would have gone - maybe next year.

Of course plenty of Scandinavian viewers would have been happy with the result of the big match, with a long association now between Geelong and the Danish league (in particular through Cats star Jimmy Bartel, a visitor to several of the Scandinavian leagues).

The USAFL has announced the seedings for the 2009 National Championships to be held in Mason, Ohio with a record number of teams playing this year. The seeding Committee has finalized the seeding pools for almost all divisions, with Division IV and the women's division still requiring some final revisions (added when available).

As always, this has been a difficult task, especially given the complexity inherent in a national competition (e.g., trying to compare teams that never played each other during the season, or did not play many or any games during the season). The goal of the seedings is to promote a lively and balanced competition based on the information available. The nature of this task is inherently imperfect, and although we know this subject could be fodder for endless debate, we assure you that we have done our best.

The seedings and some rationale behid them can be viewed below.