World Footy News

In great news for international footballers looking to make it to the game's highest level, Gold Coast have announced that Papuan Stanis Susuve has been listed alongside his teammate from the Mosquitoes, Amua Pirika, to join their squad. And the Gold Coast coach, former West Coast Eagles premiership player Guy McKenna, has expressed a hope that more PNG players will join the AFL-endorsed club in coming years. If either recruit is successful when the club debuts in the AFL in 2010 then surely AFL scouts will encourage greater investment in international markets. An AFL Papuan New Guinea press release follows.

The Dubai Dingoes will today host the third Dubai 9s tournament at Sharjah Wanderers Sports Club. This year’s tournament will be attended by eight teams and follow the rules used in the AFL Middle East season.

The bulk of the sides in this year’s tournament are members of AFL Middle East. The Dubai Heat, Dubai Dragons and Doha Kangaroos are all attending. Abu Dhabi will split into two teams for the event. Noticeable absentees are runners-up the Muscat Magpies. Dubai’s Gaelic club the Celts will take part, as they have done in the past. Rounding out the group are the Bahrain Bombers, a potential precursor to a Bahraini side in next year’s AFL Middle East season.

For those interested in attending, the day begins at 8.30am with a draw to determine scheduling. Qualifying matches run until 1.05pm followed by finals which will conclude by 4pm. Each team will be involved in a minimum of four matches.

Food is available all day, the venue is fully licensed and there will be a bouncing castle for the kids. A gala dinner at Le Meridian Dubai will follow the event. This will include a memorabilia auction supporting the Victorian Bushfire Appeal.

With an ever increasing array of international talent in the AFL, or players with strong/recent international links/heritage, it's timely to review how some of them are going now that the 2009 season is underway. Beyond the breakthrough of getting an AFL contract, it remains an uphill battle. In fact for the current crop it seems the biggest challenge at the moment is just getting past injuries to make it onto the field.

PNG have continued their great efforts in securing scholarship places for their junior and development players. Added to the success of the recent One Tribe tour of PNG it all bodes well for future success in so many ways for Australian football in PNG. Scott Reid, Chairman of the AFLPNG Board, was kind enough to give WFN a brief rundown on this year’s crop of footy exports - a staggering 24 in all.

And in news just in, expect information on yet another exciting development for PNG footy shortly.

Google Australia today got into the April Fool's Day theme with the unveilling of the "gBall". While the use of GPS technology has clearly come into play in the coverage and analysis of AFL matches, its introduction into the actual gameball is yet to become a reality.

The Gball product is described as follows "This weekend around the country, the gBall(BETA) will change Australian rules football as we know it. Building on our core strength in search, Google was approached by a number of Australian rules football leagues to apply our technology in their search for new talent. In response, Google, in partnership with the official supplier of matchballs to the AFL, Sherrin, has developed the gBall. Incorporating specially developed Google technology, it will be used in all school and amateur competitions - and will go on sale to the public - this weekend."

The rest of the mock article can be read here.

The Gold Coast Football Club has been awarded the 17th licence to compete in the AFL competition. AFL Chairman Mike Fitzpatrick, in a message to the GC17 board said:

"This is an historic decision of the AFL Commission and it is only the sixth time since the AFL Commission was established that a licence has been awarded to a new club.

"It is not a decision that the Commission has made lightly and it has been made after a long period of investment in Queensland and a rigorous process over the past two years in which the Gold Coast football, business and wider communities have made clear their support for and ability to sustain an AFL team.

"It is also a decision that we have made after a rigorous process to validate the business model for a Gold Coast Football Club. We are confident that we grant the licence knowing that you have put in place the foundations to build a strong and sustainable club which will serve well the Gold Coast community".

However, the licence remains subject to finalisation of the agreement between the Queensland State Government and the Gold Coast City Council on the terms by which the land for the stadium will be transferred, and a decision by the Federal Government on further funding for the stadium. Both of these issues are expected to be resolved soon.

The Queensland club debut in the primarily Victorian TAC Cup Under 18s this weekend, and are on track to enter the VFL in 2010 and the AFL in 2011. If a west Sydney side is to be formed for a 2012 AFL debut then major developments are likely to be announced by the end of this year.

Andrew Werner, older brother Joe Werner and Joe's wife Katy Werner have decided to follow their sporting dreams to Australia. Joe Werner was a standout basketballer for UW Lacrosse and was also picked up as a tight end for the Green Bay Packers. In 2008 he was offered the opportunity to play for the Kilsyth Cobras in the South Eastern Australian Basketball League. This year, Joe's wife, Katy Werner, a former UW Lacrosse basketballer herself, was offered the opportunity to play for the Lady Cobras.

This week, Joe's younger brother Andrew, pictured at left with Geelong coach Mark "Bomber" Thompson, joins them both in Australia. While Joe and Katy play basketball in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Andrew will be heading to the other side of the continent and the country Western Australian town of Mt Barker to play Aussie Rules.

Hot favourites the Dubai Heat have defeated the Muscat Magpies by nine points to claim the inaugural AFL Middle East VB Premiership, completing the season undefeated. Simon O'Keefe of the Muscat Magpies was awarded Best on Ground in the Grand Final.

Read on for a report of the day, courtesy of AFL Middle East Commercial Manager, Stephen Nugent.

While outsiders generally associate the word "Catalonia" with the autonomous region in Spain centered around Barcelona, the Països Catalans, or "Catalan Countries" also extend north into the region of Rousillon in southern France and the tiny nation of Andorra in the Pyrenees, known for being the only nation where Catalan is the sole official language.

This year, the Lliga de Futbol Australià de Catalunya will span all three nations of the Catalan-speaking region, with the Cornellà Bocs and Belfry Valls from the autonomous region of Catalonia in Spain, one team from the Aussie Rules community in Andorra, and the newly formed Perpignan Tigers from the French side of the border.

After Valls kicked off the year by winning a pre-season tournament in Barcelona last weekend, the first round of the LFAC will be held on the weekend of the 18th and 19th of April. The league will play 6 home-and-away rounds, with the grand final to be held on June 21st.

The LFAC thus joins a growing crowd of multi-national leagues in Europe - the DAFL having included both Swedish and Danish teams for a number of years and the Croatian-Austrian-Czech Championship also being able to lay claim to being a league across three nations.

After many years of struggle, France is finally ready to host its first national championship. The national league will take the form of a series of tournament rounds played in the different cities which are home to clubs, Montpellier having the honour to host the historic first round this weekend.

The four established clubs of Paris, Strasbourg, Bordeaux and Montpellier will compete in the first season, with the new clubs in Perpignan, Aix en Provence and Toulouse hoping to appear at the Coupe de France tournament to be held in Bordeaux in July.

Read on for a preview of the four teams involved in the inaugural national competition.

New Zealander Moss Doran, regularly mentioned in WFN articles such as this one, has this year stepped up in the footballing world and moved from country Victoria to the AFL Queensland, impressing in his first outing with his new club.

Doran, who represented the NZ Falcons at the last International Cup, has played the last few seasons for South Warrnambool in the strong Hampden League of country Victoria. This season he has done what many Kiwis have done before, and moved to Queensland!

However, it is not a life of lazing on the beaches that has drawn him there, but rather the chance to further develop his Australian football skills playing for Mt Gravatt Vultures in the very strong AFL Queensland competition.

To read about his latest exploits, see New Zealander Impresses.

Nauru, the tiny Pacific nation that made a fortune from bird guano and then ran out of the stuff sending the country near broke, has relaunched its domestic competition under a exciting new system. This is a country that came 5th in the 2008 International Cup, with most of the country AFL mad and looking for a long term solution to getting domestic footy happening again.

Unfortunately the Nauruans played the game on a village/tribal basis which created quite a violent contest at times, especially when you consider that the ovals lacked any great covering of grass. As a result it has been some years since the domestic competition has been played in a formal manner and given the nation’s excellent results at IC08 the place was cherry ripe for the game to reinvent itself.