World Footy News

One of the teams present at this month's International Cup won't represent a country. Yet the AFL's approval of the team, which attracted some scepticism from facets of the international football community, will result in Israelis and Palestinians of Islamic, Jewish and Christian faiths pulling on a "Peace Team" jumper and representing unity in a region troubled with violence.

WFN spoke with Roni Kresner, Director of Information & Project Development at The Peres Center for Peace who put things in perspective. "There is no AFL field in Israel or the Palestinian Authority; AFL equipment can not be purchased in this region, and had to be flown in from Australia; there are no professional AFL coaches; and the players speak different languages – Hebrew and Arabic – and accordingly all instruction must be translated into both languages."

And if trying to train a group of players that don't share a common language wasn't difficult enough, "Israelis cannot enter the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinians cannot enter Israel without permits, and so, in order to hold joint training sessions, the Peres Center organised permits for the Palestinian players, allowing them to attend training sessions in Israel." Positively these hurdles have been overcome and the team will partake in the 2008 Australian Football International Cup.

Last Saturday former Brit Brad Moran put in a star peformance in the AFL, booting Adelaide to victory against a gallant young Carlton side at AAMI Stadium. Moran's family is from England and only moved to Australia's Gold Coast region when he was a teenager. As a late-comer to Australian football, he was given surprisingly little time to develop at North Melbourne despite a great start to his career. Traded to the Crows, he has struggled with injury for West Adelaide in the local state league (the SANFL), and we mentioned his likely eligibility for Great Britain at the approaching International Cup. However the Bulldogs hierarchy were keen to focus on locally developed talent (Brits stick to home grown talent), an admirable pursuit, and as it turns out Moran now appears to be very much required by Adelaide at the business end of the season. We weren't going to follow this up, but a reader from Britain suggested the big fella deserved a write-up, and fair enough too.

WorldFootyNews.com and USFootyNews.com have teamed up to present the USFooty Top Ten Poll for 2008. This is the 5th edition of the poll and the penultimate before the USFooty National Championship Tourney.

1. Balt/Wash Eagles (7-0)  (4 # 1 Votes)  (UP from 3)
2. Denver Bulldogs (3-3)  (4 # 1 Votes)
3. NY Magpies (6-3)  (2 # 1 Votes)  (UP from 4)
4. San Diego Lions (1-2)   (DOWN from 1)
5. OC Bombers (2-1)   (UP from 6)
6. Golden Gate Roos (1-1)   (DOWN from 5)
7. Nashville Kangaroos (5-2)
8. Chicago United (3-1)   (UP from 9)
9. Dallas Magpies (4-0)   (DOWN from 8)
10. Atlanta Kookaburras (4-1)   (IN)

Also receiving votes Milwaukee Bombers (3-1), Seattle Grizzlies (4-4) (OUT), Boston Demons (2-3), Florida Redbacks (2-4), Minnesota Freeze (0-2), Philadelphia Hawks (1-2).

The Finland Icebreakers, outclassed by Sweden six weeks ago, looked a different side as they cruised to a 33 point victory against the Stockholm Dynamite at Salo on Saturday.

The 8.12.60 to 3.9.27 win was spearheaded by Lasse Punttilla, whose best on ground performance was remarkable for the fact it was his first time ever playing a game of Australian Rules football.

"Lassie", who has previously played American Football, troubled the Swedish defenders in the first half, before stamping his mark on the midfield when he was moved to the centre at the start of the third term.

The South African Lions have named their squad for the Cup, with 27 players heading to Australia. In a sign of exciting times to come, the average age is just 22 years. All four development provinces are represented, with 11 players from the original footy regions of North West and 6 from neighbouring Gauteng. There's one from Kwa-Zulu Natal but the big surprise is 9 from Western Cape, a great reward for their second placing at the South African national championships last month, and an amazing achievement given the region has really only been in full swing for 12 months. Former high profile AFL player Jason McCartney takes the coaching role, with Mtutu Hlomela returning as captain and the oldest player at 27. There are five teenagers in the side. Three vice captains have been named in Steven Malinga, McDonald Mashigo and Benji Motuba (pictured), who was named overall best player at the nationals. The full squad is listed below, and we'll have a full preview of the Lions next week.

At last our great game seems to be getting some coverage from mainstream media sources. The Lao Elephants game v Jakarta Bintangs game earlier this year got good coverage in the Vientiane Times, and it was excellent to see a very nice write-up of the recent Thailand Tigers clash with the Hong Kong Dragons in the major English daily The Bangkok Post.

The following is an excerpt of the original article available here.

AUSSIE RULES - Thailand Tigers beat Hong Kong in Pattaya thriller
by DAVID PATERSON

Thailand's Australian Rules Football club, the Thailand Tigers hosted reigning Asian Champions the Hong Kong Dragons recently at Horseshoe Point in Pattaya and handed the champions their first defeat in more than a year.

It was a significant victory by the Thailand Tigers as the best Australian football sides have not been able to get close to the Hong Kong team in recent times.

The last time the Dragons came to Thailand, they were undefeated in their run through the 2007 Asia championships, eventually taking home the trophy after a thrilling extra-time final against the Bali Geckos. However this time a rejuvenated Tigers team took it to the champs to come away with victory.

Final score: Thailand Tigers - 8.7.55 defeated the Hong Kong Dragons - 6.6.42

It is great to see the increased coverage the game is getting. With the Singapore Asian Championships promising to be a massive event, Asian Football is really moving ahead in leaps and bounds.

Zac Tuohy today confirmed that he will be heading to Melbourne for a trial with the Carlton Football Club. The Irish Independent reports that the Portlaoise clubman has slightly delayed his departure so that he can play with his Gaelic football club against Stradbally in the opening round of the Laois senior football championship.

"I'm going out there to Carlton on a trial basis," said Tuohy. "I was supposed to be going over on Saturday but I have delayed it because of the Stradbally game. I think I will be going over after that," he concluded. This comes just weeks after Michael Shields departed the Blues to return to Ireland.

Staging the International Cup during the Olympics probably has the potential to reduce the exposure the tournament gets, as papers in Australia and around the world squeeze in sport and human interest stories related to the Summer Games. But a benefit that might not have been immediately obvious is that with the Australian media in Beijing en masse they've been happy to report back to Australia on the progress of Aussie Rules in the host nation. Several media pieces have been done, hopefully all adding to the growing realisation in the Australian public consciousness that the Aussie indigenous sport has gained a foothold in many countres around the world.

Here's David Koch from the popular Channel 7 Sunrise program having a kick with the Beijng Bombers against the Chinese national side: Sunrise on footy in China. Looks like "Plugger" could be a cult figure at the Cup, and the Sunrise team has promised to follow the Chinese team's progress at the Cup.

And here is footage featured on the Canberra Times website, including China Red Demons' coach Darryl Hoffman: Canberra Times footage (perhaps more easily viewed if downloaded first)

Today marks 150 years since the first recorded match of Australian Football was played and to celebrate, the AFL has declared it ‘Kick Around Australia’ day. All Australians have been encouraged to join in the celebrations by wearing their football colours to work or school and having a kick of the footy. It initially seemed there would be no official international aspect to the day, but the AFL has teamed up with the Australian Defence Force to ensure that our servicemen and women overseas will be able to join in today’s celebrations. Kits containing all the essential tools for a football match have been sent to defence bases around the world, so that defence personnel will be able to have a kick of the footy with the rest of Australia.

Still imagery of Defence Force personnel playing football at various bases around the world will be available the ADF site. Vision will be fed to the television networks at Parliament House.

The writers at worldfootynews.com have worked their way through the draw for the 2008 Australian Football International Cup (we'd better also call it the AFL International Cup to make sure we get search hits - people seem to be regularly punching that in to search engines).

Putting together the final rankings of the seven writers who contributed, we've come up with the average placings and thus our consolidated tip as to the ranks come the end of the tournament.

Probably no major surprises, but read on to see how we ranked the sides.

With Finland entering the International Cup for the first time in 2008, the push for new recruits has been in top gear since the first tufts of grass appeared through the melting snow. It is a big ask for one of the newest footy nations on the world to embark on such a mammoth task, and so the net has been cast far and wide to secure Finland's best athletes.

Julian "The Big Rooster" Clark, Finland Footy's Founding Father, recently journeyed out to the British International School in Jakarta, Indonesia where 16-year old Finn Tuomas "Timebomb" Antilla has been developing well with the Jakarta Bulldogs AFC.

The Jakarta Bulldogs are an under 18 team that often play in conjunction with (and sometimes even against) the Jakarta Bintangs AFC, as well as some of the Java AFL's localised senior sides.

The NZ Falcons played their yearly game against the touring Maffra Eagles last Saturday, going down to the champion Victorian country club by 71 points. As a spectacle it did not attain great heights due to 50% greater than average July rainfall for Auckland, most of it in the 2 weeks prior to the match. The organisers also dodged a bullet when they managed to convince local authorities not to cancel the game due to the ground condition - an issue familiar to many sports these days.

With coach Rob Vanstam trying a variety of combinations from his entire 29 man squad it would be also fair to say that the result would not be a true reflection of the Kiwis' talents. Much will have been learnt by the coach as he now fine tunes the squad for the IC 2008.

Maffra 13.13 (91) defeated New Zealand 3.1 (19).

A full report is available here from the NZAFL website.