World Footy News

Details for Scotland's VB Haggis Cup have been finalised with six teams fronting up for the Glasgow tournament. The 2007 event will feature sides from Scotland, England, the Republic of Ireland and a combined Brussels/Strasbourg team.

Melbourne daily newspaper the Herald Sun reported on Sunday, 25 March that Ms. Abbe Land, mayor of California's 'busiest precinct' and Democratic senate candidate for California, will be at the MCG on Saturday.

Apparently the Roos have been adopted by Hollywood business leaders since they played the G'Day LA match in 2005 and they, like Dean Laidley, want the team to return in January.

Rumour has it that if they don't return the Socceroos will play a game there instead against an MLS side, possibly including David Beckham - although our sources tell us that the NRL wanted to do the same this year and were rejected as the AFL said they were still interested in future matches.

Australia’s indigenous population is very important for football. The indigenous community makes up only 3 per cent of Australia’s population and yet a staggering 12 per cent of players in the AFL are regarded as indigenous Australians. Last week the AFL and the Federal Government took a step to strengthen this relationship, establishing a $2.4 million program centred on encouraging indigenous Australians to take up Australian Rules.

Discussion between touring Australian side "the Convicts", USFooty and the AFL Canada has come upon the possibility of the Convicts taking on the US Revolution on Sunday, October 14th this year as part of the 2007 USAFL National Club Championships to be held in Louisville, Kentucky. The match will follow one week after the Convicts take on the bulk of the Canadian Northwind in Toronto on Saturday October 6th, as a curtain-raiser to the Grand Final of the Ontario AFL, Canada's oldest league and one of the biggest and strongest outside Australia.

Like Michito Sakaki and Tsuyoshi Kase last year, two young Japanese Samurais from the JAFL's Tokyo league have spent two months joining the AFL’s Essendon Football Club in pre-season training. Hiroyuki Toyama, aged 20, and Hiroaki Seino, aged 21, both joined Bombers training following the Aboriginal All-Stars game at the start of February and will finish up at the end of this week when they have to fly back to Japan for Uni. Among their experiences with Essendon, Hiroyuki and Hiroaki took part in an intra-club practise match and lined up for the Bendigo Bombers Reserves.

The Adelaide Football Club has inadvertently demonstrated just how long the journey may be for any other country to be in a position to be competitive against a true All-Australian senior side.  Back in 2005 top Victorian country club Maffra flattened New Zealand before the Kiwis went on to win the second International Cup.  Again in 2006 the Falcons were on the end of some hidings at the hands of country representative sides at the Australian Country Championships.  Those results demonstrated the gulf between quality country players and the best international footy had to offer, but the Adelaide Crows recently showed just how big the gap is between the top two tiers of Australian Football within Australia itself.

In an interesting piece of news, a source at the AFL tells us that two Chinese sportsmasters recently visited Melbourne for a week-long workshop centered around Aussie Rules coaching and administration. According to the AFL's Josh Vanderloo, "Essentially, our international plan with countries such as China, India, Argentina and I would think Pakistan, involves identifying key personnel who can be trained over a week in Melbourne and return to their home country and begin teaching AFL to others. We feel this is a cost effective way to introduce the game to new countries and by providing basic resources and working through the language barriers, this form of training should be a good starting point. So to answer your questions, we are keen to follow this method of 'training the trainer' to help the country find their feet at a very basic level".

Also on this topic, Vanderloo tells us the planned visit of two development officials from India has been delayed by visa problems (as also happened when the last visit by an Indian squad was organised through the second version of the IAFC a few years ago), but that they are intending to organise another time for the Indians to visit. (WFN tried to help ensure the visa issue was solved in time but obviously not successfully.)

A program such as this could be the best starting point for a program in countries such as those listed above, particularly as the impetus in India, Pakistan and Argentina is largely reliant on locals rather than ex-pat Australians.

The USFooty season is fast approaching so Chris Adams has got the ball rolling with his 2007 predictions, looking at his top-ten USFooty clubs and how their preparations are going.

Aussie Rules in Samoa is back and set to resume its competitions and programs in 2007 after a very quiet 2006. Despite seemingly dropping of the radar after the Samoan team competed at the 2005 International Cup, the growing interest in the game has remained and the newly named AFL Samoa (formerly SARFA) is keen to get senior and high school competitions underway.

The arrival of AFL Samoa National Development Officer Michael Roberts has assisted the organization in Developing Programs and creating opportunities for all Samoans to try 'Aussie Rules' football.

The 2008 International Cup is now less than 18 months away (assuming an August 2008 date). This might seem like a long time to fans but supporters outside of Melbourne might want to start considering now whether they'll take a trip to Victoria's capital for the event. More importantly it means league administrators around the world will need to finalise whether their country will attend and start drawing up plans for getting around forty players and officials Down Under. Making sure players are available and sufficient funds are in place are two of the biggest issues. With AFL General Manager of National and International Development, David Matthews, recently speculating that as many as 20 nations may attend, we've looked at all the possible countries and rated the likelihood that they will be in Melbourne in 2008.

The prospect of Australian sport, including both footy and cricket becoming popular in Uganda, a country in East Africa, is a topic explored by this interesting article written by Mark Heath "Australian Sport, raising spirits in a remote East African Village" at Dave's Travel Corner.

In 2006, without a Sherrin handy, Mark apparently introduced Ugandan children from a rural village to the concepts of Australian rules football by way of a tightly packed newspaper strapped with some flexible reeds and it has apparently proven popular. He says he plans to return in future with the real pigskin.

Ontario has proven fertile ground for expansion sides this winter and encouragingly enough, they’re all well outside the Toronto area, the hotbed of Canadian footy. There’s the Ottawa Swans in the Nation’s capital, the Cambridge Warriors in the Kitchener/Waterloo area (watch for an article on them in a few weeks) and a third side in the city of London, nicknamed the London Stallions. Home to the University of Western Ontario, the city of 335 thousand is located about 2 hour’s drive southwest of Toronto. If London sounds familiar footy-wise, that’s because a previous side, the London Magpies, went under after the 2005 season. The Pies struggled on and off the field having trouble fielding a side for their final few matches before missing the playoffs and folding.