World Footy News

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.

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.