The Central and North West Region of AFL Britain is fast approaching the final rounds of its first season, with the Manchester Mosquitoes having secured their place in the Grand Final after 7 rounds.

The race is on to see who will challenge the so far undefeated Mozzies in the decider, to be held in Wolverhampton on July24th. Huddersfield and Nottingham are both locked on points and have challenging matches scheduled for the final two rounds.

After a break this weekend for the Brit Cup, the next round of the CNW Region is on the 10th July in Manchester, with Sheffield vs Wolverhampton at 1pm and Huddersfield vs Manchester at 2.30pm. The season is far from over and it will be a race to the finish.

After a hopeful starting line-up of clubs for the season, the region finished with 5 regular clubs, the Sheffield Thunder, Huddersfield Rams, Manchester Mosquitoes, Nottingham Scorpions and Wolverhampton Wolverines.

Of those that didn't make the pitch in 2010, Birmingham are hoping to re-emerge next year, alongside Hull, Oxford and Peterborough who look set to make their belated debuts in 2011.

The third annual Coupe de France will kick off in Strasbourg this weekend, bringing together players from right across the country. After a season where they had to withdraw from the national league and focus on rebuilding their squad, the Strasbourg Kangaroos will be eager to show the rest of the nation's clubs that they can match it with the best.

The Paris Cockerels are hot favourites going into the tournament, hoping to add another back-to-back championship. Led by Icelandic-born footy veteran and former Denmark Vikings captain Palli Finnsson, the Parisians have been tough to defeat throughout their 2009-10 French national league, running out premiers.

The Bordeaux Bombers look likely to be the principle challengers to the Cockerels, having finished runners-up in the main season. Fred Zohar's charges are justifiably confident that they can make the final, and haven't given up on any dreams of knocking off the Cockerels for the cup.

The Toulouse Crocodiles are also banking on a strong performance, which could see them go all the way to the final. However they may be missing some of their key members for the tournament.

Rounding out the field will be a combined team from Languedoc-Roussillon, composed of players from the Montpellier Firesharks and the Perpignan Tigers. They also have the potential to surprise the field, with the French footy community noting that the Tigers were surprise finalists in last year's Coupe.

For more information, visit footballaustralien.com or the Strasbourg Kangourous' site.

The Finland AFL reached a new milestone last Tuesday with the first ever league game being played where both teams were comprised entirely of non-Australians.

The Salo Juggernauts, who have had a completely Finnish line-up for their entire 3 year history, took on the reigning premiers, the Turku Dockers, who rested their three Aussies for the match and had a line-up for the 9-a-side game that included eleven Finns, two Estonians and one Greek.

This report courtesy of Craig Primmer.

The Portsmouth Pirates from the AFL Britain's Southern Regional league recently hosted journalist Jordan Cross, who had a run with the Pirates in spite of his previous impression of the game as being mindlessly violent.

Cross' article can be read here on The News' website, including a video.

The Pirates started up only in 2009, and have since grown to be one of the strongest clubs in England's regional south, hosting the National Club Championships earlier this year where they finished runners-up to the Huddersfield Rams.

The Irish players in the AFL have been undergoing a tough time of late, with Tadhg Kennelly out injured, Setanta O’hAlpin experiencing a dip in form and Pearce Hanley playing his first senior game of the season before being dropped. There has however been some promising performances in the VFL with Tommy Walsh kicking his first goals in the sport for Sandringham and Michael Quinn impressing for the Bendigo Bombers, kicking 3 goals last week.

While footy clubs around the world work on setting up junior programs to bring youth talent to the game, one important source of youngsters should not be overlooked. That is school exchange programs. Each year there are hundreds of youths that come to Australia from overseas to attend school and a number of them inevitably end up playing Aussie rules with their local school or club competition.

Many of these youths show great promise, and it would be a shame to lose them to the game when they return home, often not realising that the game exists in their home country. German exchange student Bijan Muller is one such talented youth who has shown a natural talent for the Australian game. There will be many Socceroos fans out their who would welcome any dilution of sporting talent available to the German soccer team following their 4-0 defeat of Australia on Sunday.

The following article New cult hero at Hawks is from the Ararat Advertiser.

The biggest national tournament on the AFL Britain calendar is fast approaching, with this year's edition of the annual Brit Cup scheduled for Saturday July 3rd in Southampton. The tournament sees club and representative sides, drawn entirely for the EU players pool in the UK, compete over the course of a gruelling day.

It is also a key opportunity for players to prove themselves worthy of selection to the GB Bulldogs national team, who will be competing at both the EU Championships in Denmark and the International Cup in Australia within the next 18 months.

Teams can be either entered by a club, or representative of an area such as the Southern Region team which competed in 2009. The only stipulation is that all players must be eligible for EU status - no players classed as Australian or Rest of World are permitted. Games will consist of 12-a-side games using full AFL rules and be played on an oval, with a maximum bench size of 6 and a maximum squad size of 18.

Mr. Danish Football... from Andy Rew on Vimeo.

The AFL Sweden has announced its squad for the 2010 European Chapionships, with coach Daniel McClaer naming 26 players in what the league is rating as the strongest Swedish Elks side assembled to date.

Officially announced via the Swedish Footy Show, the squad is dominated by players from southern Sweden, with the Helsingborg Saints and Port Malmö Maulers providing sixteen players between them in the 26-man squad. The Göteborg Beserkers from the west have five representatives, the Stockholm league four and the Karlstad Eagles one.

Coach McClaer says this is the first time ever that they have had to do a proper selection process for the Swedish national team, with the majority of the squad chosen from national selection trials held on May 15th in Stockholm.

Captaining the Elks will be Johan Lantz from the Helsingborg Saints. Previous Sweden captain and Scandinavian footy veteran Andreas Svensson is also in the squad, along with another eight members of the Elks' 2008 International Cup team.

The Elks also have some international elements, with Englishman Daniel Scotford named alongside Americans Matt McMahan and Ross Levesque in the main squad, and Irishmen Aidan O'Reilly and Mark Rattigan listed as emergencies.

The Elks' draw sees them open the tournament against Croatia at midday on August 1st, followed by a clash with Germany two days later, then the final game of the pool rounds against Ireland on August 5th. The Elks and Irish would be early favourites to defeat both Croatia and Germany, meaning their clash on August 5th could see the winner go straight to the gold medal match. Whilst the Irish have traditionally been the team to beat in Europe, the home team Elks will be very keen to prove that they can match it with all comers.

The full squad list and Swedish Footy Show clip follow.

Rome's first-ever Australian rules football match was held last month, with the home town Roma Blues defeating Milano by 25 points.

Among the small crowd who braved the wet conditions to watch the match was former Australian deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer, who is currently Australia's ambassador to the Vatican. Mr Fischer described the event as a strong standard, "better than a Hume league match", referring to the country footy league of his old electorate in southern NSW.

The Roma Blues have recruited around 30 players so far, after starting training earlier this year.

The match got some coverage in the Australian media, with this article appearing in the Sydney Morning Herald.

In other footballing news, the AFL Italia has been awarded the rights to host the 2010 EU Cup in Milano later this year.