World Footy News

As part of their preparation for the 2004 season, the St Kilda football club undertook a two-week training camp in London, an innovative approach which the Saints believe greatly helped them to their explosive start to the year just played.

Such was the success that the Saints are doing it again, but this time heading to Potchefstroom, South Africa, taking advantage of world-class training facilities as well as the chance to expose the players to the challenges faced by the South African people.

World Footy News' Aaron Richard talks with St Kilda coach Grant Thomas.

The Canterbury Australian Football Leagues (CAFL) is based around Christchurch, on New Zealand's South Island. The league features four men's clubs, with hopes to expand to six. Anecdotal evidence suggests that footy is quite popular with girls in New Zealand schools. Recently the CAFL held its first women's game.

Readers may be surprised to know that there is a lot of player interchange and playing of compromise/international rules between the growing number of Gaelic and Australian Rules football clubs in East Asia. The following report is not exhaustive and focuses on Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo.

AFL club Carlton are believed to be interested in luring a second Irish player to Australia - the older brother of former hurling star, Setanta "Carlos" Ó hAilpín. The following information is courtesy of the ARFLI website.

In Germany there are a handfull of GAA and Aussie Rules clubs and a consistent report that there were Compromise rules matches played in the early 90s in Dusseldorf, but records of those games seem to have been lost with the comings and goings of early teams. Now the Gaelic and Aussie Rules clubs have more stability and it is in Munich where there has been a version of International Rules played on and off for the past 7 years.

The Pratt Industries 2004 US Nationals have been run and won (see earlier stories), with Denver, Arizona and Cincinnati/Pittsburgh winning their respective divisions. worldfootynews.com have some photos from the tournament.

One of the biggest growth markets in world sport has become fresh alternatives - more people are playing ultimate frisbee, American football, lacrosse, korfball, the Gaelic sports and (of course) Aussie Rules worldwide than ever before. Some predicted globalisation would kill off the smaller sports, but it seems that if anything more people are playing a wider variety.

An opening for a new alternative sport to fill a commercial niche market opened in Chile in 2002, and after some research, Adrian Barraza decided Aussie Rules was a prime candidate. The business never took off, but the code survived the project and grassroots footy in Santiago continues.

For a code that is sometimes derided as an artificial hybrid with little tradition, International Rules in various forms has quite a long history.

A dedicated group of footy faithfuls in the Kansai area of Japan are doing their bit to ensure footy in Japan is not just confined to Tokyo. Next Sunday a women's match, a kid's match and a men's 3-team tournament will take place in Osaka, highlighting the great developments that continue to be made footywise in the Kansai region, and in Japan as a whole.

The votes are in from World Footy News' second online poll, asking what method of recruiting has been most successful for clubs - and the two top responses were the internet and old-fashioned word-of-mouth.

In March, the Sydney Women's AFL played the local New South Wales (Australia) Women's GAA in an International Rules match. It is hoped that this will see the start of cooperation and expansion for the women's version of the two codes in NSW, perhaps even leading to a women's IR series between Australia and Ireland.

The Denver Bulldogs have again taken out the top division of the USAFL Nationals, the most prestigious event in US Australian Rules football. Other winners were Arizona and a combined Cincinnati/Pittsburgh side.