Well almost the top.  The AFL today announced that the man who has been at the operations helm at Hawthorn for the past eight years will replace Adrian Anderson as the AFL's General Manager, Operations.  It had been suggested in various media outlets that the AFL clubs were very keen for the position to be taken up by someone who had been part of the operations of an AFL club rather than someone from outside the league.  Our readers with a slant towards international football development will also be pleased to see that among Mark Evans' responsibilities at Hawthorn was the "Establishment of New South Wales, New Zealand, Ireland and U.S. recruiting pathways."

The full announcement from the AFL follows.

The Northern Territory Football League Grand Final will be played this weekend to finish off a fantastic season for the code with this year’s most consistent and dominant team, St Mary’s, taking on reigning premiers the Tiwi Bombers.

The following press release from the AFLNT details how the weekend of footy will unfold. The weekend will feature many Grand Finals in various grades and divisions, with the Premier League Grand Final the highlight of the weekend.

International football will hit Cairns next month when the PNG Binatangs Under 16 team arrives en route to the South Pacific Cup in Townsville.

As part of the lead up to their bigger mission in Townsville, the Papua New Guinea team has accepted the challenge of playing a combined U16/U18 team from Pyramid Power Junior AFL club in Gordonvale, 25 kilometres south of Cairns.

Pyramid Power is one of the newest clubs in the AFL Cairns Juniors, but has already been active in the world of international Australian Rules football. Their “Brother Club” project has seen them interact with clubs overseas, so this opportunity is an extension of their international dealings.

While 9 aside footy has been a crucial vehicle for Australian Football on the international front (where availability of grounds are limited and regular local comps use a more achievable team size), in Australia it’s been far less well recognised. For a time the AFL has dabbled with ‘Rec Footy’; and last year re-launched it as ‘Cadbury 9s’ (or AFL 9s). For regular followers of the game the notion of the game's ‘untouchables’ were put forward a couple of years back and people were challenged to consider what was ‘untouchable’ about the game.

An oval field?

18 aside? Or the 16 of the old VFA for a period? This discussion has been had again in recent days on Melbourne radio (SEN in particular) due in no small part to the role of the rules committee and Kevin Bartlett. What are the non-negotiable’s? There's now talk of a 'charter' as reported last Friday (by Patrick Smith - a regular guest of Bartlett on SEN) - see Visionary charter to manage evolving changes to AFL rules.

During the 2012/13 season the AFLNT added the Alice Springs-based Central Australian Redtails to the Northern Territory Premier League, along with a further Darwin club in the Banks Bulldogs.

Each played four games as an experiment to assess whether or not the club would ultimately survive in the highest level of the NTFL competition.

The Central Australian team performed above expectations on the field, winning three of its four games, including a win against current flag favourites, St Mary’s.

The following press release from the AFLNT discusses the direction both the league and the club will now take to determine whether or not the Central Australian Redtails can be admitted to the NTFL Premier League.

Late last year the AFLNT were proud to recognise the record growth of the game of Australian Rules football across a range of areas. That growth has now translated into an exciting season which is now culminating with the 2012-13 finals series. It was a season which expected and got huge growth, and this growth has delivered both on and off the field.

This coming weekend will see last year's premiers, the Tiwi Bombers, take on Wanderers for a place in the NTFL Premier League Grand Final.

Last week it was St Mary’s who booked the first place in the Grand Final by giving out a hiding to the Tiwi Bombers to the tune of 51 points in the Second Semi Final. Wanderers upset Southern Districts by an even 100 points to get to the Preliminary Final.

St Mary’s await the winner of the Tiwi v Wanderers clash, and are the overwhelming favourite to take this year's flag.

The AFL have a new ad campaign out for the 2013 season and it features viewers around the world checking out what our game has to offer - obviously we like this concept!

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“I took three boys into Darwin to play representative footy in November 2012 and we went food shopping together. I asked one of the boys to go and get me a few things from the shopping list and they had never heard of it before."

"When I asked what they eat for breakfast, the reply was ‘left over turtle or dugong’. Unfortunately we were unable to find that in Coles. It is great to see that the traditional food gathering still takes place in these areas such as fishing and hunting. If we can help them [indigenous people from Groote Eylandt] understand our culture then we will be able to achieve so many more goals.”

This recollection from Shawn Ford, the AFL Regional Development Manager for Groote Eylandt, says a great deal about the differences that still exist in many ways of life in remote parts of Australia. Aspects of life that many take for granted can be viewed differently by others.

It is quite likely that the last thing on the mind of John Campbell Miles, as he hopefully kicked rocks along the bed of the Leichhardt River back in 1923 looking for gold or other treasures, was that 90 years later Australian Rules footballers would be kicking goals of their own near that same location. But that is exactly what is now happening, and with some real heavyweight support behind it, Australian Rules football in Mount Isa may be about to unearth its own mother lode of talent.

Such is the eclectic nature of mining towns that men and women bring more to a location than just skills and an ethic of hard work. They bring themselves and their assortment of interests and hobbies.

So it was that three men, notably Alan Metcalfe, John Edwards and John Cargill among others, arrived in Mount Isa and worked hard to establish the Mount Isa Australian Football League. Alan Metcalfe went on to be a key instigator in the further development of the North Australian Football Championships which featured teams from Mt Isa, Darwin, Alice Springs, Townsville, Cairns and Port Moresby.

By 1957 the town boasted three teams (Tigers, Rovers & Healy) which was enough to start competition. Due to mining downturns and the transient nature of the populations of mining towns, footy in Mount Isa has often been a stop/start proposition.

It's been a while since we have had an Aussie rules movie doing the rounds. On March 7 around Australia the film Blinder will be released. No details are available yet on any international release. The trailer for the movie can be seen below.

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The following is from the the Blinder movie website. Legendary actor Jack Thompson reprises his role as a football coach three decades after The Club, in new film Blinder which explores our country's love affair with the greatest sport in the world. Shot around Torquay, Victoria, the story follows an ex-footballer who, embracing the life lessons his coach once taught him, reignites an old flame after a long absence away from his home town.