World Footy News

Australian football legend and AFL ambassador Kevin Sheedy is appearing at the Australian Embassy in Beijing on Tuesday night from 7 to 9pm. Guests are welcome but bookings are essential. Details from the Beijing Bombers via Facebook follow...

Kevin Sheedy, AFL Legend, is coming to Beijing for one night only. With Stephen McDonnell, ABC Correspondent, lined up to ask the hard hitting questions of Sheedy, join us for this chance to hear tales straight from the footy field, the locker room and the management office.

Kevin Sheedy is one of the AFL's most enduring figures. A player and coach over 5 decades, he has an unsurpassed record of involvement in 1,000 games and eight premierships. Kevin is currently working with the AFL, who have brought him to China as AFL Ambassador.

Contact events at austcham.org now to secure your ticket for this one off event at the Australian Embassy. Bookings essential. Tickets RMB200 inc Canapes and free flow of DXCEL Australian Beer and Wine Republic Wine.

7:00pm - 9:00pm
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Australian Embassy, Beijing
21 Dongzhimenwai Dajie
Beijing, China
More details

The Washington DC area's junior footy program, Saturday Morning Footy, enters its 4th year when it begins on June 20 at Bluemont Park in Arlington VA. The program is based on the AFL's Auskick program and is designed to introduce girls and boys aged 5 to 15 to the great game of Australian football. Members of the Baltimore Washington Eagles, the US Revolution and the US Freedom will be on hand to help out with the program.

The program has steadily grown and this year plans to add an introductory house league for the older and more experienced players.

Australian Trade Commissioner for Brazil, Greg Wallis, is putting together the first Brazilian Aussie Rules team for the match against the Santiago Saints coming up next weekend.

When the Carnaval - Brazil's first Australian Rules team - take the pitch against Santiago on June 20, they'll be wearing a jumper designed by a cartoonist from the Adelaide Advertiser newspaper and include players from across six states of Brazil. The squad currently consists mainly of Australian expats, although there will be at least one local.

This has made for a challenge in getting the team together, as Wallis tells us, "Brazil is so big that players are from all over the country, not just Rio and Sao Paulo, so logistics is difficult. But more than that, there are actually very few Australians here. I've probably contacted most of them for this game. Its not like a US or European city where you might have thousands of ex-pat Aussies - here you can count them on one hand in most cities."

Regarding the future of the game in Brazil, Wallis says "The first game is really just a bit of fun for the guys here, but if it goes okay then who knows - could develop into something bigger."

"It would be a big step from this game against Chile to so some sort of local competition... Soccer is so dominant here that it would be a tough job to convince locals to start playing in the absence of a visible and continuous local competition."

"So I think that for the foreseeable future we'll just play these one off games when we can and have a bit of fun. But as long as I'm here I'm more than happy to be involved and if we really see a bigger interest then I'll be the first to help make a local competition happen."

Carlton's Fijian-Australian-Irish recruit Setanta O'hAilpin tonight staked a claim to keep his AFL career alive. It has been speculated on this site and in other media that Setanta is likely in his last season unless he can string together a long run of good matches. After his infamous indiscretion at the start of the year (suspended for striking a team-mate in an internal trial) and injury problems, it was looking as though the Irishmen might not even get a chance to prove his worth on the field.

But injuries to other players have opened the door, especially with gun swingman Jarrad Waite out for the season. The Old Dark Navy Blues have given Setanta an extended run, giving him a chance to build some confidence and regain the tempo of AFL footy. Last night Carlton turned to Setanta to hold down a key position, as a roaming centre half forward against St Kilda at Etihad Stadium. Although the Blues went down to the Saints, O'hAilpin played a very useful game, gathering 8 kicks, 2 handballs, 5 marks and booting a goal that kept Carlton in the match late in the final term. His marking at full stretch caused some problems for the Saints, and his harassment around the ground slowed them moving the ball out of defence. A spearing pass to Brendan Fevola (who goaled) was also a crucial moment in the final stanza. For the record, Carlton couldn't quite do enough to defeat the unbeaten Saints, losing 14.11 (95) to 16.8 (104).

One game like that won't extend his career, but if he can repeat it most weeks for the rest of the season, then he'll continue to gain the confidence of his team mates who will use him more, and he may well find his odyssey Down Under continues at least another year.

The Solna Axemen were the toast of Swedish football last Saturday, after winning the VB Cup for the second year in a row. In what proved to be an exceptionally entertaining tournament, Solna remained undefeated right throughout the competition, before triumphing over Stockholm rivals Södermalm in a hard fought Grand Final.

This year’s tournament was held in the town of Falun in the north of Sweden, and is only the second ever after last year’s inaugural VB Cup in Karlstad. This year’s tournament, which consists of 24 minute, 9-a-side matches between club sides from all over Sweden, was played out by seven teams: Falun, Södermalm, Solna, Bromma, Helsingborg, Port Malmö and Karlstad. In addition the competition also attracted some fringe players from Oslo, Göteborg and Östersund.

Thanks to Nic Townsend from the AFL Sweden for this report.

Tromsø is the largest city in northern Norway, roughly on the same latitude as the northern coast of Alaska. The town is far enough north that when the sun sets in October it doesn't comes up again until well into the following year. It's also the new home of the most northerly footy club in the world.

Last month, Swede Johan Julin and Tasmanian Ben L. Jago kicked off Aussie Rules in the town, with three social matches played to date. A group of recruits, mainly Swedish and Norwegian, but also including a Canadian, a New Zealander and Dutchman, have been taught the rules and taken part in matches in a park with ski poles serving as goal posts.

World Footy News spoke with Julin about the group's progress so far.

Collingwood’s Irish experiment could be expanded with another Irishman trialling with the Magpies this month.

17-year old Paul Cribbin, who plays for the Kildare Minor team (U-18’s) is in Melbourne for several weeks training at the Lexus centre. Collingwood recruiting manager Derek Hine has said the club was pleased to be able to bring Cribbin to Australia and let him experience the game and the club first hand.

Cribbin has long been seen as having great potential in Gaelic football and has been in inspiring form for Kildare in recent matches and his talent has caught the eye of AFL scouts based in Ireland. Earlier this year he played a vital role for his school side who were beaten finalists in the All Ireland senior Colleges Cup.

He has plans on returning to Ireland a week before Kildare’s next championship match, but should he be signed up to a permanent deal, he will join fellow Irishmen Marty Clarke and Rookie Kevin Dyas at Collingwood.

Ed: WFN welcomes John Dunne to our team of correspondents. Based in Ireland, he will be reporting on the Irish league as well as following the fortunes of Irishmen in the AFL.

Earlier in the year Melbourne newspaper the Herald Sun reported that the Western Bulldogs were in contact with Azumah Nelson regarding Australian football - see Bulldogs look to forge ties in Ghana. The Bulldogs are a good fit, with a lot of African immigrants in their region in western Melbourne (reportedly 15,000 - over half of which are Ghanaian), hence their appointment of multicultural development officers who work with recent arrivals.

One such employee is Sash Herceg, who was once involved with Australian football back in his original homeland, Croatia, which is indicative of the game's broad spectrum these days.

Azumah Nelson is a famous Ghanaian who held several world boxing titles in the 1980s and 90s and become very well known in Australia for a series of controversial fights with Australian world champion Jeff Fenech. Nelson has visited Australia in recent years using his profile to raise money for the Azumah Nelson Foundation which aims to give sporting opportunities to children in Ghana. The Foundation has been dealing with both the Western Bulldogs and the Australian Football League and recently publicised through their website that Australian football will become one of the official sports of the charity.

We report their release and chat to the AFL's Kevin Sheehan about their involvement.

A number of (non-Aussie) former members of the Danish Australian Football League are currently making headlines in spreading Aussie Rules across Europe. In the Norwegian city of Tromsø, Helsingborg Saints old boy Johan Julin is part of a group founding the world's most northerly club. In Andorra, British expat Doug Pate is running a club. Páll Finnsson, the Icelandic captain of the Denmark Vikings at IC08, this weekend pulled on the boots at the French Championships.

Back in Iceland, Páll's brother Jón Hrói Finnsson has also been trying to get the sport started since returning from his stint playing footy in Denmark. It seems his efforts are paying off, with school clinics underway and a senior side in formation in the town of Ólafsfjörður.

Around 400km away in the Icelandic capital Reykjavík, a group of around a dozen senior players have been kicking the footy on a weekly basis since May, under the leadership of Friðgeir Torfi Ásgeirsson, another Icelander who learnt to play in the DAFL.

worldfootynews.com has a new section called Country Snapshots available from the pulldown menu Countries. Over the coming months we will be adding a brief summary of the status of Australian football in each country that has had some form of involvement in the game.

To be a truly complete record would require pages of information per country and need to be constantly updated, so these snapshots are not intended to replace a Google search or a search of our news articles and links - there's nothing like tapping a query into the search facility at the top left of our website. Rather, they are intended as a quick look for basic information, especially for people new to the world of international Aussie Rules.

The first region completed is Africa. As always, let us know if there are any significant errors or omissions.

Los Santos de Santiago, Chile's first Australian rules football club, will head to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil on Saturday June 20th for a match against a team called the "Carnaval", drawn from expat Aussies and locals in Rio and São Paolo.

The Carnaval will be the first-ever Brazilian team to take the pitch. Rob Spurr from Los Santos tells us the game was conceived at a business dinner last November in Sao Paulo, where he met with Australian Trade Commissioner for Brazil, Greg Wallis. Wallis has since taken the steps required to pull a team together from across Brazil, as well as securing a ground and sponsors.

Spurr also mentions the Santiago club is going from strength to strength, with the Saints setting themselves the goal of having a Chilean team at the IC11 in Melbourne. "We had 29 to our first training for 2009 in April, including 19 Chileans. Last week we held our first intra club test match - Chile v Anzacs whereby the Chilean side played as a national team for the first team in front of about 100 spectators."

"Whilst the Anzacs were victorious on the day, the Chilean side were competitive and have the basis of a decent side to work with."

"Our committee hopes to kick off a minor league format by later this year and we are still shooting to have the Chilean national team at the 2011 International Cup in Melbourne."

Spurr also confirmed Los Santos are planning to return to Argentina for another tour match this year, and are hopeful that the Rio match should see a side from Brazil also make the trip down to Buenos Aires.

Anyone interested in footy in Chile can contact the Santiago Saints via their Facebook group.

There is no doubt that AFL South Africa has been a stunning success so far. They are spending a year consolidating their amazing growth of up around 17,000 players across a number of communities, seeking to expand within those fixed programs rather than roll out further areas. It has been speculated before that if the program is successful then the AFL may look to other African nations. The big questions are what defines success and might they spend a decade proving the long term viability before any further moves?

For those that feared an undue level of conservatism it is pleasing to report that the AFL has already begun to look at other opportunities. Or more accurately, other African countries are looking to the AFL. We were aware of discussions with media from several other African countries in terms of showcasing the game, but the AFL Talent Manager Kevin Sheehan has revealed to worldfootynews.com that Botswana and Kenya are the front runners for FootyWILD programs, with Ghana also in the mix.