For the first time, all five Scandinavian countries hosted regular season footy in 2010, in addition to hosting the first-ever full-field European Championships in Australian Football.

Whilst Denmark and Sweden remain the most established leagues in Scandinavia, the Icelanders and Finns are also playing premiership seasons, and the clubs in Norway are laying the groundwork for league play in future.

Read on for the winners and losers in domestic footy around Scandinavia in 2010.

The Toulouse Crocodiles have recently aligned with AFL club Hawthorn, in the process changing their name to the Toulouse Hawks. Hawthorn have relationships with a number of international clubs and leagues, with the Zagreb Giants becoming the Zagreb Hawks and the Phoenix Scorpions rebranding as the Arizona Hawks a few years ago, and more recently the New Zealand AFL taking on the Hawks moniker for their national team.

As part of the arrangement, the Toulouse Hawks will play their future matches in the silver jumpers of the New Zealand Hawks.

The six-team French National League recently kicked off their 2010-11 season, with a Northern Division comprising Paris, Strasbourg and Bordeaux, and a Southern Division with Toulouse, Perpignan and newcomers the Marseille Dockers.

Pictured at left are Cyril Mahamad and Quentin Delaville from Toulouse in their club's new gear. For more on the new partnership between Toulouse and Hawthorn, visit this article on the Hawthorn FC website.

A great video on Youtube discussing women's footy in Italy, including quality footage from the match between Ireland and Italy in Parabiago (Milan), Italy, as part of the European Cup 2010 in September.

 [youtube:boCRch_9R1Y]

Thanks to keyframe.tv.it and australiaitalia.it.

See also Italian girls share love of AFL

For a bit of festive fun we have for your viewing pleasure a recent Fosters beer commercial from the UK with a cameo appearance by the Sherrin, reinforcing the global association of Aussie Rules football and Australia. Seasons greeting to you all.

The World Footy News / Cam Homes World Rankings stirred debate at various stages, including requests for 9-a-side footy to be included. Ultimately the consensus appeared to be to exclude such matches from a "full-scale" football ranking scheme. It was also suggested to create a separate 9-a-side ranking. We shied away from that on several grounds such as the additional effort but primarily on the basis that there is very little international competition in terms of national sides competing in 9-a-side outside of Europe. And even within Europe there has very often been hybrid eligibility rules with plenty of expat Aussies, although in some cases with a handicap system applied.

However, leading up to the 9-a-side 2010 European Cup, run under the auspices of the European Australian Football Association, primary organiser Philip Porublev approached worldfootynews.com to compile a Europe 9-a-side rankings to help with seedings for the tournament.

The University of Birmingham Sharks played two fixtures in late November against Britain's oldest Australian rules teams - the prestigious universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

On November 13th, the Sharks took on Cambridge in a 9-a-side match, with Birmingham's 15 British locals defeating Cambridge's all-Australian squad by 13 points.

The following weekend saw Birmingham Uni take on Oxford, in the Sharks' first-ever 18-a-side match. On the wide open spaces of Oxford Uni's full-sized ground, the Sharks were outclassed but not disgraced, going down by 58 points, 14.8 (92) to 5.4 (34).

The extreme cold and huge snowfalls of the northern winter unfortunately saw the cancellation of the Uni of Birmingham's third Aussie rules match of the season, which was planned against the Leeds Metropolitan Uni Chiefs. However, the season is scheduled to recommence in late January with a clash against the Chiefs and another against the University of Chichester Cougars.

The following report is courtesy of Dave Wheaton and first appeared in the University of Birmingham's student newspaper, The Redbrick.

The European footy community is to host some of Australia's best young footballing talent next year, with the elite Australian Institute of Sport-Australian Football League Academy to tour.

In the past few years, the AIS-AFL squad have focussed on touring Ireland and South Africa, with a number of matches against the South African Lions.

The AIS-AFL squad will take on a European representative side, featuring local players from up to seventeen nations, in a match in London. They will also visit the brand new triple-level European Training Centre, which is due to open this December, in the Italian town of Gavirate in the province of Varese.

The tour will conclude with a visit to Gallipoli for ANZAC Day.

We'll have more information on the preparations of the European side in the near future, but in the meantime see AIS-AFL Academy to make European trip in 2011 for more details.

Swans defender Tadhg Kennelly has had knee surgery today. Kennelly twisted his knee in a training mishap in Ireland last week and immediately returned to Australia for assessment.

While many readers may find it unusual that an AFL player is doing this sort of unsupervised training - and in fact some players have contracts that forbid this sort of thing - it is quite common for Irish players to not only train while in Ireland but to compete in Gaelic football matches in the offseason.

Collingwood today officially listed Irishman Paul Cribbin of County Kildare with pick 81 in the Rookie Draft. Cribbin has been training with the club for some weeks after signing a two year contract with the 2010 Premiers earlier this year.

Despite rumors of the return of Cribbin's countryman Marty Clarke to Collingwood through the year this has not eventuated. But the club and Clarke have left the door open for it to possibly happen in the 2012 season.

At this time of year, Aussie Rules clubs the world over are getting back into off-season training. Major AFL Clubs take the opportunity to use this time to go abroad and hone themselves in different environments, Collingwood go to Colorado to work at altitude, this year North Melbourne went to the colder climate of Utah and Richmond are currently in New Zealand working on fitness and team building via some extreme sports.

This weekend’s weather in Scotland afforded the Glasgow Sharks the chance to train in some unusual conditions as well. With at least 4 inches of Snow covering the Sharks regular training venue at Glasgow Green, this Sunday’s session was less ball work and more snowball work!!