World Footy News

The Scottish Australian Rules Football League (SARFL), in partnership with Culture and Sport Glasgow, Community Club Programme is to launch Scotland's first junior Aussie Rules football program in Glasgow in June 2007 and to be run throughout the summer. The program will introduce the game through free-to-attend Glasgow youth clinics held at Bellahouston Park on a weekly basis, with the SARFL providing free coaching and tuition.

This big edition of Footy Shorts looks at Houli's debut, the exposure footy's global side is gaining on the AFL website and Pakistan's plan to send representatives to the EU Cup. It also takes a glance at the struggle football faces in Nauru, following the nation's withdrawal from the 2005 International Cup, and reveals that two AFL players are headed for the New York marathon.

Just a quick note to explain that Ash is checking through the WFN Links section, and any modified addresses or descriptions will result in old links appearing in the "LINKS last 2 weeks" section in the right hand column, along with any new links added.

The prospects of Aussie Rules putting down some permanent roots amongst the locals in China are looking more and more positive, with the Melbourne Football Club continuing its exploration of commercial interests and confirming that footy has been accepted into several educational institutions. Getting government sanctioning is important in all countries, but none more so than in (partially) Communist China.

Key outcomes from a 10 day visit by Demons officials, the Melbourne City Council and the AFL included:

- visits to Beijing, Shanghai and Melbourne's sister city Tianjin

- commitments from several Chinese education, health and sports authorities were secured to allow the introduction of the Australian game over the next 12 months

- interest from large television broadcasters in adding AFL coverage to their schedules - up to 15 players will be heading to China in October to run clinics and training seminars for expatriate and local players

- continuing to examine possibility of playing an exhibition match next year in Tianjin

- plans to bring one or two players back to Melbourne to train with the club and learn to deliver training programs

- again affirming the hope to have China represented at the 2008 International Cup, with perhaps 16 countries expected

In recent years soccer has dramatically changed its media profile Down Under, with the game no longer a poor relation to sports such as Australian Football and the Rugby codes. But something which has angered many sports fans in Australia is the sudden insistence by soccer authorities that the round-ball game be referred to as Football and suggestions that it's the real football at the expense of all others, something which ignores both local football history and in fact the origins of all the football codes (something most soccer fans are probably unaware of). With this in mind it's somewhat offensive to read the coach of Sydney F.C., the Harbour city's premier soccer club, declaring Australians "who chose not to embrace the growing nature of football Down Under were un-Australian and insecure in their code". Branko Culina was also quoted on the Fox Sports website by AAP as saying that "All Australians are sports minded people and if you're not going to accept football you're un-Australian".

The term "un-Australian" seems to be bandied around these days to mean "if you don't agree with me then you're not a real Australian", even though multi-culturalism, democracy and diversity of opinion has long been a cornerstone of Australian society. A great irony is that although there were indeed those that weren't inclined to support soccer, it was through the open-minded majority who preferred other codes but didn't try to hold soccer down that the game was allowed to grow to its present size. Let's hope Culina was "quoted out of context" or was simply referring to people who may actively seek to hold the game down, as opposed to the many who may quite reasonably simply prefer other sports, such as the football codes that are contact sports and higher scoring. As other writers have noted before - the fact that McDonalds is a dominant world-wide food chain doesn't mean individuals should abandon their own local favourites to embrace it simply "because lots of other people eat it".

Five PNG players currently playing in the AFL Queensland with the Coolangatta Blues got a mention in the Sunshine Coast Daily newspaper this weekend after a match as some of the best on ground in a losing side. Coolangatta went down to the Maroochy-Northshore Roos by 39 points, but the Roos' coach noted that without the PNG contingent the Blues would be a lot worse off, also commenting on the immense untapped potential of players in PNG who might be appearing in AFL ranks in future.