World Footy News

In this article WFN completes a review of 2007 and previews what we can expect in 2008, along with a wishlist of things we'd like to see.

Happy New Year to all our readers. WFN wishes you a healthy and prosperous 2008.

On the international footy front, what a great 2007 - surely the best the game of Australian Football has ever had. The good news just kept on coming - record levels of attendance within Australia, record investment in footy in South Africa, a rush of Irish talent to the AFL, a host of new clubs across Europe, the giants of China and India stirring, and North America continuing its steady growth - clearly the vast majority of indicators were positive for Aussie Rules. We look back at some of the exciting news from the year just finished and think about what lies ahead.

The AFL has updated their International Cup page, with basic details of the tournament (mostly as previously reported here). In 2005 the Cup featured on their website through a mixture of stories from worldfootynews.com and other sources. Let's hope the coverage in 2008 surpasses those levels, but with the AFL finals on, it will be interesting to see how much front page space is dedicated to the tournament. Still, the amount of attention given to international footy in 2007 has been excellent, which augers well for the years ahead.

In other online news, a new International Cup Facebook group has been created, and don't forget to tell your Facebook friends about the World Footy group (note you do have to join Facebook to access either site).

The Australian Rules Football League of Ireland is looking forward to an exciting 2008, with the creation of two new clubs on the west coast in County Mayo and County Kerry.

Denis Kennelly, a cousin of Sydney star Tadhg, has organised the first training session for the Kerry Kangaroos for December 28th. A number of Denis' former clubmates from the Leeside Lions will be on hand to assist, as will Dublin Demons President John Enright, himself a Kerry native.

A big bonus though will be the presence of Swans star Tadhg, who will assist his cousin in organising the session and ensure media interest locally. The Kerry club has been an ambition of Denis' for some years now and having recently moved home from Cork he decided it was time to put his plan into effect. Kerry has long been the pre-eminent county in Gaelic Football and this should ensure that any recruits should make for a very competitive team.

Meanwhile, further north on the western seaboard, the Mayo Mariners have begun life online. The club have set up a website in order to attract recruits in the county which recently lost Pierce Hanley to the Brisbane Lions. The club's website can be found at www.mayomariners.com and they are hopeful that some favourable media attention will draw interest from those interested in playing in Mayo and the Surrounding Sligo and North Roscommon catchments.

There's no question that South Africa is the AFL's number one priority in terms of international development of Australian Football. The past couple of years have seen a significant roll out of support programs, some direct funding, and assistance in gaining major sponsorship from corporations such as Tattersal's and Costa Logistics.

Although there are many other programs being developed around the world, both with and without AFL support, the short term successful rise of Aussie Rules internationally would seem to be most closely tied to the South Africa experiment. So it is with great interest to see recent political changes in that country, and the predictions of possible future effects which analysts are now in demand to explain.

An article appeared in the Herald Sun called "Sheedy California Dreamin", in which the AFL legend was quizzed on his thoughts about several topics.

Among the comments, the new AFL ambassador expressed his desire to see the game promoted more in the USA, even talking up planning construction of an Aussie Rules stadium in Los Angeles similar to the recently completed stadium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Sheedy's comments follow his recent promotional tour to the States where he saw the growth of the game there first hand.

While there are three clubs with local metro footy leagues in California, it was the recent exhibition match between the Sydney Swans and Kangaroos which highlighted the need for a dedicated venue. Due to problems securing a venue, the UCLA's Intramural athletic field hosted a makeshift oval and temporary stands which accomodated a crowd of just over 3,000 people but had sold out weeks in advance.

The reduced capacity caused major problems in catering and there was allegedly a spectator safety issue preventing more patrons attending. These problems may have had something to do with the high costs associated with running the event and this year's proposed match between Geelong and Richmond in LA being cancelled. An AFL venue, which Sheedy recognises may take decades in the planning, would be a significant investment in the ongoing growth of the game in the USA.

The Indian cricket team, renowned for their crowd-pulling power at home (players enjoy superstar status), and for being the highest paid national team of any sport - in terms of sponsorship, is currently in Melbourne preparing for the Boxing Day Test.

They were scheduled to play the Bushrangers (Victoria's side in the Australian domestic competition) in preparation for their hit-out against Australia later this week, but poor weather led to play being suspended on the first two days and the Indian players instead given Australian football lessons. Melbourne newspaper, the Herald Sun featured Rudra Pratap Singh and Mahendra Singh Dhoni on its back page on Saturday, both marking footballs. This followed a picture of Melbourne football club captain David Neitz with Sachin Tendulkar, who is wearing a Melbourne jumper, the day before.

Thanks to technical improvements by Tobin Richard, WFN is pleased to announce that the World Footy Atlas now works under Internet Explorer 7, Firefox and Safari (and partially under IE6). The database is also now far more complete for sites outside of Australia, although we still need readers to get online and check the accuracy of locations or let us know if things change!

The array of footy clubs across the world is starting to look pretty impressive on a map, especially the growing density in Europe and North America.

If you know the location of a club that's missing, let us know. Note that at the moment the map data works via our links database, so a team needs to have a website to be on the map. The next step (coming soon) will cover the teams who aren't on the web.

Footy is coming to France's Atlantic coast with the creation of the Bordeaux Bombers. The Bombers bring the number of clubs in France to three, joining the Strasbourg Kangaroos and the Paris Cockerels.

The Bombardiers de Bordeaux had their first run on Saturday November 3rd, with plans to send players to a planned France-Germany match scheduled for March 15 next year in Strasbourg. They are then hoping to have their first against outside competition when they host Barcelona in April, followed by a triangular tournament between the French clubs later in July.

Clubs have come and gone in France, with the St Esteve Saints in Perpignan and clubs in the towns of Cergy and Senlis near Paris being launched a few years back only to disappear again. With people interested in starting new clubs around the country, hopefully the current crop can build towards some new growth in the French footy scene.

While the NFL focus for many Aussies this year has been on Graham, Rocca and McBriar, it is a different kind of Aussie export to the NFL bringing big results for the locals. NFL rookie Daniel Sepulveda has credited the Aussie Rules drop punt for shoring up his punting game which has lead him to be named as the Joe Greene Great Performance Award for the team’s most outstanding rookie with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

In the article Sepulveda wins Steelers rookie honor on the Steelers' website, Sepulveda said "I knew in Waco one of the things I needed to work on, my most glaring weakness, was getting the ball inside the 20…It was during my senior year that I made the switch to the Australian rules football kick, the Aussie kick, but that kick has been awesome for me. I can go out there with 100 percent confidence that I will be able to hang it up there and get the guy to fair catch it inside the 20. We have had some success doing that this year and it’s been good."