World Footy News

Freedom Coach Wayne Kraska gives us the genesis of the current tour and US Women's footy.

In 2005 after a group of players had been gathered together to play an exhibition game at the Atlanta USAFL National Championships it was suggested that a women’s team in Atlanta would be a good addition for the Atlanta Kookaburras as a club. Being the President of the club at the time there appeared no one really interested in taking on the role to coach this team, so after separating myself from the coaching ranks of the men's team, it was left to yours truly. After our first training session at Scott Nathaniel Park in Decatur, Georgia, I was contacted by Kathryn Hogg who along with a few others had been the driving force behind the trial games in Atlanta in 2004 and the year before in Kansas City.

The following is Essendon's media release on Meli's signing.

Essendon has signed exciting Papua New Guinea prospect David Meli. The 178cm, 76kg small forward is the second International player ever signed by the Bombers (after Irishman Michael Quinn at the end of 2008) and the first player signed by the club under the AFL's International rookie system.

The 16-year-old PNG resident (he turns 17 in September) is currently living on the Gold Coast to further his football career. He is expected to begin training at Windy Hill in November.

On Saturday August 1, the small town of Mason Ohio played host to the 2009 49th Parallel Cup, an annual event that matches the USA National Australian Rules Football Team, “Revolution” up against “Northwind”, the Canadian National Australian Rules Football team. The 49th Parallel is the average latitude that marks the border between the US and Canada. It was a football match that eventual saw the US Revolution victorious by 8 goals and leaving the Northwnd think tank scratching their heads on what had possibly gone wrong for football in Canada on that one beautiful August day in the small town Mason.

On a day where bigger issues overwhelmed the football, the Vietnam Swans defeated the Laos Elephants by 4 points in a important warm-up game for the upcoming Asian Championships in Kuala Lumpur.

Craig Senger had been a player with the Jakarta Bintangs Football Club and tragically lost his life in the recent Jakarta bombings of the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton Hotels.

Prior to the match, the Australian Ambassador, the Deputy / Minister Counsellor from the Indonesian Embassy and Dave Kainey (“Official Legend” of the Jakarta Bintangs and former Swans President) addressed all players and spectators. A minute's silence was observed.

The Chippendham Redbacks entered the ARUK Southern league in 2008, winning only one match in their debut season. In a remarkable transformation, the Redbacks lost only one match this year, last weekend defeating the Bournemouth Demons to win their first-ever Southern Premiership.

This report courtesy of the Chippenham Redbacks.

In breaking news AFL club Essendon have international rookie listed Papua New Guinea's David Meli. The future AFL club, the Gold Coast, listed Amua Pirika and Stanis Susuve in firsts for the game, but the listing of Meli is perhaps an even more significant step forward.

We've followed the rise of Meli from being an emergency for the Mosquitoes 2008 International Cup squad through to his performances for the Queensland under 16s (see Meli to the fore for Scorpions) and the Southport Sharks, as one of the wave of PNG players on scholarships in the Sunshine state. High hopes were held that he would be drafted, and in fact it could be argued AFL clubs were slow to take what is almost a "free hit" outside the draft.

More on David Meli's recruitment soon.

The nine Irish players involved in the Australian Football League have enjoyed mixed fortunes this season with some players making huge strides forward while others appear to have slipped down the pecking order at their clubs. Pictured is Essendon's 2009 debutant Michael Quinn.

On 7th August, 1858 Melbourne Grammar played Scotch College in Richmond Park in what is generally regarded as the first official Australian football match ever played.

On 8th August, 2009, 151 years later, almost to the day, history was created when the under-18 St John’s School Malaysian Warriors took on the Australian International School Malaysia and scored a meritorious victory, winning 17.6.108 to 5.6.36.

This will become the day every year that future Malaysian teams commemorate the first game of Australian Rules Football played, and won, by a team of indigenous Malaysians.

The Pearl River delta region in southern China is famous for two small territories controlled by Europeans until very recently. The larger city of Hong Kong was administered by the British until the closing years of the twentieth century, whilst across the bay the Portuguese maintained their outpost of Macau.

Macau is a small, densely-populated city of about half a million inhabitants, best-known for being the Las Vegas of Asia.

The Hong Kong Dragons have been playing footy since the early 1990s, with a long history of being a power in the Asian footy scene. In Macau however, the presence of Australian rules was restricted to the occasional locally-based player commuting across the water to play in Hong Kong.

This year, this is set to change with the beginnings of Auskick and school footy in Macau.

As many would know Australian rules footy has been played in New Zealand for over a century. The Great Depression eventually caused the first incarnation of the game to flounder and die out in the early 20th century. In the early-to-mid-70s the Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington competitions were re-established. This decade has seen the emergence of the Waikato League and a football presence again in Dunedin, Otago.

Over 2 articles we'll look at the 5 AFL New Zealand centres - WFN thanks the Auckland, Otago and Waikato centres for their information.

This season saw the first edition of a league dedicated solely to central England, with the rebirth in footy in the cities of Liverpool and Birmingham, and the creation of the first-ever sides from Leeds and Huddersfield.

These four sides, freshly-formed and built almost entirely from local recruits who have learnt the game from scratch, recently completed the inaugural ARUK Central home and away season, with the Huddersfield Rams finishing clear top of the table.

Fighting for the right to face the Rams in the Grand Final on August 16th, the Birmingham Bears and Liverpool Eagles will this weekend face off.

The Liverpool and Birmingham Australian Rules clubs took some time out from preparing for the preliminary to tell WFN a bit more about their respective first-up seasons.

After the significant success of the AFL Oceania match at the Pacific Islands Leaders' Forum in Cairns it is unfortunate to have to report on a setbackl for the game's growth. Two of Australian football's great recent success stories have been the return to football by Nauru and the surge of talented Papua New Guineans playing in Australian leagues. Sadly both endeavours have suffered major setbacks in 2009 as Australia's visa system has changed to restrict visitors working.

The change has completely stopped the program that saw many Nauruans play in country Victoria in 2008, which was a key to their dramatic improvement and helped them re-start the game at home. For AFLPNG the setback saw some of their most talented young players sent back to Papua New Guinea, potentially hurting their chances of being drafted.

The AFL, AFL Oceania and the Australian Government have been in discussions to find a way to reduce the undoubted damage these changes have caused, and the Cairns match shows there is plenty of goodwill towards Australia's indigenous game, but to the best of our knowledge an ideal solution has yet to be found.