World Footy News

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.

On Saturday 1st August, in the tiny village of Mitteleschenbach in the heart of Franconia (northern Bavaria) Germany, the German Black Eagles and the Czech Lions took the field. Playing according to EU Cup 9-a-side rules, both teams fought it out under the blazing sun – perfect conditions for relaxing at the beach, but quite extreme when playing Aussie Rules – for 4 x 20 minute quarters.

Thanks to German national team coach Luke McBride for this report.

Press release from the AFL.

ESPN and the Australian Football League (AFL) have reached a multiyear rights deal for live multi-platform coverage in the United States and Canada. The agreement brings fans in the U.S. and Canada access to up to three live matches in each round of the home and away season for the remainder of this season and through the end of 2011. It also includes a number of Finals Series matches, including the 2009 Toyota AFL Grand Final from the Melbourne Cricket Ground in September.

In the United States, matches will be streamed live on ESPN360.com, ESPN’s signature live sports broadband network, as well as select AFL matches – including the Grand Final - being televised on ESPN2. In Canada, TSN or TSN2 will televise at least one live or delayed match per week.

The Pacific Islands won a tightly contested match over the North Queensland All Stars in Cairns on Wednesday night to take out the inaugural Pacific Islands Forum AFL Challenge Cup.

The match was enjoyed by many delegates from the Forum including the Prime Ministers of New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Nauru. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tossed the coin to get the match underway (pictured left).

The final score was Islanders 8.12 (60) to the All Stars 7.6 (48).

The pinnacle of the Asian Football season is the Asian Championships, this year to held in Kuala Lumpur at the Selangor Polo Club on 5th September.

The Malaysian Warriors are hosting this prestigious tournament for only the second time in commemoration of their 10th year of existence.

Teams participating include the hosts Malaysian Warriors, current title holder Dubai Heat, powerhouses Singapore, Hong Kong and Bali, as well as regular contenders Jakarta, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and the China Reds.

It is expected that the format will be two groups of five teams each playing each other once with the top two teams in each group playing off in cross-over semi-finals, with the two winners playing off in the Grand Final.

The Asian Championships get bigger each year and this year sees the second edition of a Junior Championship which will feature a significant number of Asian-born players. Teams from Jakarta (last year’s winner), Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore are expected to participate.

There will also be an Auskick session for the younger kids, as well as full catering and plenty of entertainment.

As always, it will be a huge day and all Malaysian footy followers are urged to get to the ground. Play starts at 10.00am