World Footy News

The Dutch Australian Football Association have announced plans to launch a four-team domestic league this year, with clubs under formation in the cities of Amsterdam, Eindhoven, Utrecht and The Hague.

The Eindhoven Eagles and the as-yet unnamed side from The Hague held their first training sessions this week, with Amsterdam and the Utrecht Saints to hit the track next week. The clubs will have a few more weeks to recruit, before the season kicks off in earnest in June, although May 10th will see a practice match between Utrecht and the Rest of Holland.

Joost van der Hulst from the Utrecht Saints told WFN "The local league will be 9-a-side. Recruitment so far is going quite well, both Dutchies and Aussies - the Utrecht Saints have almost a full team now, the other three city teams need a couple more."

Footy has been played on and off in the Netherlands since around 2003, with the Flying Dutchmen formed in late 2006 and playing regularly over the last two years. With the creation of the new local league, the Flying Dutchmen will continue as a national representative side, with a schedule of six home-and-away matches planned against the Paris Cockerels, Rheinland Lions and Berlin Crocs leading up to this year's EU Cup in Croatia.

Their first two home fixtures, against the Berliners in March and against the Parisians last weekend, both resulted in big wins for the Hollanders, boding well for their coming matches. Their next fixture will see them travel to Cologne on June 20th, for a match against the Rheinlanders.

Footy in Britain has now spread well beyond the traditional heartland of London, with the development across the countries progressing steadily for several years. At a London league committee meeting, we caught up with Gavin Mahoney - the man tasked with taking footy in the capital to the next level. We discuss his impressive background in the sporting industry and his new role in the UK.

The Miami Dolphins have reportedly signed 30 year old Jy Bond, son of former Richmond player (and 3AW football commentator) Graham Bond as a punter. Bond has been in training over the last few years to get a shot at punting in the NFL. He was drafted to Richmond under the father/son rule some years back, but never played senior football for the club.

Bond is likely to have to compete for the punting spot throughout the preseason until either he or incumbent punter Brandon Fields is cut from the squad. Ben Graham and Sav Rocca both went through this process before making the final roster to debut in the NFL.

Former Sydney Swans and Collingwood forward Nick Davis has also been in the US in recent weeks for punting trials and has reportedly had interest from the San Diego Chargers (the former club of Darren Bennett). Further trialling could also see him win a preseason slot with an NFL club to compete for a punting spot when the regular season rolls around. Davis along with a group of other hopefuls from Australia have been showing their wares in specially organised sessions in front of a number of scouts from various NFL clubs and colleges in the US.

There have already been some Australians offered college scholarships this year to play gridiron football, such as Alex Dunnachie who has a full, four-year scholarship at the University of Hawaii. Dunnachie was playing Under 19's for Banyule in the VAFA in 2008.

Prior to their first game in this year's French league, the Paris Cockerels played two friendly matches, with an 18-a-side match against the North London Lions in Paris, and the second one against the Flying Dutchmen in Amsterdam.

Although the Cockerels went down in both matches, they put in some good performances, even leading the traditionally strong North London side with ten minutes to go in their match. Here is a brief report of those games.

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The following is a brief summary of the March '09 tour of Papua New Guinea by the Indigenous Boomerangs side.

The match in the capital, Port Moresby, was the Under 18 PNG Kupundas triumphant by one point, 9.12 (66) to 9.11 (65) at the University of PNG track oval. Of just as much interest was the excellent turnout of around 2000 to 2500 spectators (different sources). Best players for PNG: Kayne, Nicholas, Pena, Norman, Carbry and for the Flying Boomerangs: Ah Chee, McMasters, Crowe, Crook-Harrison, Wilson.

A detailed review of the match was written in PNG's The National, by Peter Pusal - see Rules tourists get pipped by a point. Apparently the match finished with a thrilling last gasp goal - "The Boomerangs led 9.11 (65) to Kupundas 8.12 (60) with less than 30 seconds of play remaining in the match when Logo gathered the loose ball from a desperate surge up field and snapped a goal from 40m to grab an amazing win on the stroke of full-time".

What was expected to be a more developmental PNG side (drawn mainly from Highlands and Momase) took to the field in the town of Lae for match two. With a game under their belt the Australian Aboriginal young men came out of their shells in a strong performance, winning 7.10 (52) to 2.2 (14). But excitingly a crowd of 7000 to 8000 turned out for the youth match, a great sign of interest in the game.

AFL Oceania's Andrew Cadzow summed up the two matches as "Huge crowds and magnificent football". The PNG AFL then hosted a fundraising dinner at the Grand Palace restaurant after the match in which B Mobile announced a K300,000 sponsorship of AFL PNG’s junior programmes over the next three years.

You can check out photos from the tour in our new media gallery (click on the image above or visit the gallery through the Multimedia menu at the top of this page - more photos from international footy to be added in the coming months).

The Dubai Heat, who recently secured the AFL Middle East silverware, have won the 2009 Dubai 9s tournament. The tournament is now in its third year and featured a record eight teams, but quite remarkably, the Heat remain its only victors.

The below summary is courtesy of Dubai Dingoes Club President Phil Temple.

This year’s event saw the return of the Dubai Celts Gaelic Football Club and the arrival of the Bahrain Blues, a likely starter in the next AFL Middle East season. Abu Dhabi Falcons split into two sides, whilst the Dubai Dragons, Dubai Heat, Doha Kangaroos and tournament hosts the Dubai Dingoes also took part. Eight teams in total was the tournament’s largest to date.

Supporters of international Australian football often hope that as newcomers to Australia take up our game that their talents will be recognised by AFL scouts, ultimately leading to greater interest in international recruitment, i.e. immigrants playing the game will open Australian eyes to international development. It's also just great to see more people taking up the sport.

One of the groups that have been viewed as likely prospects are the many recent tall athletic Sudanese immigrants. Many of them seem to take up soccer, but slowly Aussie Rules is picking up converts. This would probably accelerate if a Sudanese youngster made it to AFL level. But even someone making state league level must be an inspiration to some of the young players being offered a choice between sports.

So it is good to see Andrea Miar, a 23 year old Sudanese refugee, has been doing well in the new Tasmanian state wide league. We reported in New state league for Tasmania that 2009 would see this competition sit above the northern and southern Tassie leagues, and Andrea Miar's side, Launceston, is one of those competing at the top level.

Miar moved to Launceston, Tasmania, with his family when he was 9 years old. He's now studying information technology at a TAFE (technical college), and excelling on the footy field as an agile ruckman. With plenty still to learn about Australian football, Miar should still have a lot of improvement to come. An AFL call-up is highly unlikely, though if a 24 year old Canadian Rugby player can make the leap, perhaps he's worth a gamble?

You can read more about his story in a Mercury article Sudanese ruckman on the up, by Adam Smith.

At the 2008 International Cup dinner those attending were treated to a great video package put together mostly during the event but also containing footage from the Peace Team's preparation in their homeland. The man behind the moving tribute to the players of the tournament, Rob Dickson along with his young son Byron died after a car accident on the road between Sun City and Pretoria in South Africa. His wife Dusty and son Gabriel were also injured in the accident and are currently being treated in hospital. Our thoughts are with his family and the family of his wife Dusty who along with Gabriel are still in a South African hospital.

Dickson also produced the recently released "The Essence of the Game" documentary which profiled the game's 150th year and featured the International Cup and in particular the Peace Team. Dickson's football background was highlighted by his time with Hawthorn (17 games) and the Brisbane Bears (2 games). Many Australians will best remember him for winning the Channel Nine television reality show Australian Survivor.

Going back into the WFN archives Dickson was also involved in a Vietnam footy tour CARE AFL All Stars meet Hanoi Swans for HIV/AIDS awareness. Dickson was due to meet up with the AIS AFL Academy tour next week and it seemed he would continue to tell the story of the emergence of international football talent on film for some time to come. Dickson was clearly a man with a broad vision for all aspects of the game, and the game will be poorer for his loss.

Melbourne daily newspaper The Age this weekend reported that the AFL will be holding draft camp-style tryouts in the South African cities of Cape Town and Johannesburg, coinciding with the upcoming tour to South Africa by the AIS-AFL under-17 squad.

Similar to the Western Bulldogs' trials in Fiji earlier this year, the project will be partly focussed on recruiting athletes from other sporting backgrounds for the existing AFL South Africa senior programs, as well as selecting up to four South Africans for the "Mtutuzeli Hlomela Scholarship" to attend the AFL Draft camp in Australia later this year.

The league has placed advertisements in Cape Town newspapers calling for boys between 15 and 19 with strong sports backgrounds, who stand a minimum 175 centimetres and weigh at least 70 kilograms, to attend a testing day at the Sports Science Institute of South Africa at Newlands, with follow-up testing also planned. A session near Johannesburg, featuring about 30 boys already identified, will also be held.

AFL talent manager Kevin Sheehan said that having introduced the junior program FootyWild to South Africa two years ago, the league's next responsibility was to create an ongoing pathway for talented players.

The full article can be viewed here.

For a South African perspective on the trials, the article Hunt for the best Footsie player on, by Sizwe Banzi is worth a read.

The Irish Warriors started their season on a winning note with a hard fought victory on April 4th over their cross channel rivals the Great Britain Bulldogs. In the fine settings of St David’s college Artane, Ireland got off to a slow start but finished well to run out 8.6 (54) - 4.9 (33) winners.

In a much changed side to the one that went to the International Cup in Melbourne last year, Ireland fielded three new caps in Donnacha Reilly, Gary Green and Danny Burke.

This report courtesy of the Australian Rules Football League of Ireland.

There are Australian Rules Football Clubs throughout Asia and the newest of these clubs is the Timor-Leste Crocs. In Darwin on June 13th this year, the Crocs will go up against Asian footy veterans the Bali Geckos for the first time in the inaugural ‘Crikey Cup’, as a curtain-raiser to the AFL Round 12 match between the Western Bulldogs and Port Adelaide at TIO Stadium.

The idea for the Crikey Cup came from Steve Irwin’s connection with East Timor and its sacred symbol, the crocodile or ‘grandfather’. In 2000 Steve Irwin led a team from Australia Zoo, with the Australian Defence Force and the World Society for the Protection of Animals, to rescue two injured crocodiles from a cramped and destroyed cage in Dili, the capital.

For the third year in a row the AIS-AFL Australian Under 17 squad will head off to South Africa (departing tomorrow, Sunday 12th April) for a tour that will include training, sight-seeing, working with the locals and a match against the South Africa Lions.

It's expected that the Lions will be a senior squad similar to that which finished third at last year's International Cup and was ranked fourth in the world behind only Australia, PNG and New Zealand in our 2008 rankings. Jason McCartney is expected to again coach the Africans and a few new talented juniors will be given an opportunity. AFL South Africa Operations Manager Joel Kelly told worldfootynews.com that "Several invitational spots (are) being offered to new ‘yet to be identified talent’ as part of a broader search". The match will be played at Boland Park, Capetown at 3:30pm on Monday 20th April - it has been moved from the better known Newlands due to the sudden transfer to South Africa of Indian's Premier League cricket tournament because of terrorism fears on the sub-continent. Boland Park is described as being in Paarl, "in the beautiful wine district of the Western Cape".

Gold Coast's coach, Guy McKenna, has also been mentioned as making the trip, despite his team underway in the TAC Cup. No doubt his attention will mostly be on Australia's next wave, but given the willingness to sign up two Papua New Guinea players already, surely he will also be very interested in the performance of the younger South African players.

The trip is book-ended by matches against VFL and WAFL sides in Australia. More details follow below.