The Scottish Australian Rules Football League are proud to announce the competing teams in the 7th annual Haggis Cup competition, kicking off today, Saturday April 10th. The tournament will take place at Cartha Queens Park Rugby Club, 94-96 Dunbreck Road, Glasgow, G41 4NS. Each group will play in a ‘round robin’ format with each game consisting of 2 x 12 minute halves.

Group 1: Glasgow Sharks, Aberdeen Dingoes, Huddersfield Rams
Group 2: Edinburgh Bloods, Dublin Demons, Glasgow Hammerheads

This year sees a strong lineup, with SARFL champions Edinburgh Bloods (four time Haggis Cup winners), and ARFLI Champions and 2006 Haggis Cup winners Dublin Demons in Group 2. Defending champions Aberdeen Dingoes and England’s Central Division Champions Huddersfield Rams battle it out in Group 1. Host city Glasgow fields two teams, one in each group, and promises that after reaching the finals last year, this year will be the most exciting and hard fought yet.

Games will begin at 11.30am and SARFL are proud to announce that the scores will be on the website at the end of each half, so don’t worry if you can’t attend, you will be able to follow the scores as the tournament progresses. You can access the scores at www.sarfl.org.uk/sarfl2010, match reports and final results with best and fairest awards will also be on site after the tournament.

2010 will see Norway's oldest Australian Football club take the field as the Oslo Crows, following the announcement of a new partnership with AFL club Adelaide.

Previously known as the Trolls, the Oslo Crows will this year play a three-team regional league with western Swedish clubs the Karlstad Eagles and Göteborg Beserkers, as well as a few games against their local Norwegian rivals the Ås Battlers.

Norway now counts three clubs, with the Crows and Battlers in the Oslo metropolitan region and the world's most northerly club in Tromsø on Norway's Arctic northern coast.

David Stone from the Crows and Adam O'Toole from the Ås Battlers spoke to WFN about their plans for 2010.

Footy in Britain has seen steady growth for a number of years now, emerging from the traditional heartland of London, expanding now into leagues on the South coast, Wales, Scotland, Central and Northern England. With potentially another competition emerging in Cornwall as well, the foothold is well and truly there to establish the sport further and encourage a wider audience to give it a go.

The 2010 pre-season is a busy old time as well! Beginning this weekend with the Scottish ARFL's annual Haggis Cup and the Manchester Footy Carnival both on April 10, followed by the Welsh ARFL's Cardiff 'Clwb' Challenge on April 17th.

This year the Southampton-based Titanic Cup is replaced with the National Footy Carnival, courtesy of relative newcomers to the Southern League - the Portsmouth Pirates, to be held April 24th.

The city of Kingston upon Hull, usually known simply as 'Hull', is home to Yorkshire's newest Australian Football side, with the creation of the Haworth Park (Hull) Australian Rules Club.

Playing under the banner of the local Haworth Park Rugby Club, who are providing the fledgling club with a home base, the team will be the first Australian Football club in the Hull, which like many Yorkshire towns is a traditional Rugby League stronghold.

Haworth Park will compete in the AFL Britain's Central & North West division's social competition in 2010, alongside Liverpool, Peteborough and Wolverhampton. Club founder Dan Beardshaw spoke to WFN about the team's aims for their first season.

The Central European footy scene has seem some exciting expansion in the past year or two, with a number of local competitions founded, inlcuding the Czech, Croatian, Dutch, Finnish and Italian domestic leagues profiled by WFN over the past few months.

In Austria, the Vienna Kangaroos and the Graz-based Styrian Downunder Dogs will play a seven match series for the national championship, kicking off in Graz in May.

Ben Chick from the Kangaroos and Martin Schittegg from the Downunder Dogs spoke to WFN about their plans for the upcoming season.

The Wolverhampton Wolverines will make their long-awaited debut on May 1st this year, with the home game against the Birmingham Uni Sharks to be the first-ever Australian rules football match in the city of Wolverhampton.

Wolverines founder Ian Mitchell says "We are playing at our home ground, Wolverhampton RUFC at 2pm. There is potential for this game to turn into a 3 or maybe even 4-way tournament, as I've asked Hull and Peterborough, the other two new teams in the region, to join us."

"We have started to train with the Gaelic Football side in Wolverhampton, St Mary's GAA, which will hopefully be beneficial for both clubs, in terms of sharing players, transferring skills and adding to numbers at training sessions. It is that club's 50 year anniversary this year and so we hope to celebrate that with an international rules game at some point over the summer."

The Wolverines are this year competing in the social division of England's new-look Central & North West league, together with the developing sides in Liverpool, Hull and Peterborough. The league will kick off on May 8th, with all clubs heading to Manchester for huge day of British Aussie Rules.

Finland's footy scene has grown rapidly over the past few years, with the Finland AFL being founded in 2006, the first domestic clubs being created in 2007, the Finland Icebreakers national team coming to Melbourne for the IC08 and the inaugural FAFL national league kicking off in 2009.

In 2010, the Helsinki Heatseekers, Salo Juggernauts and Turku Dockers will soon kick off the domestic competition's second season, with a small chance that the Espoo Roos will re-form and a new club in Vaasa will take the field.

Recruitment of new players has been very strong over the northern winter, with the clubs counting around 100 players on paper, with only 6 Australians. All three Finnish clubs have also been hard at work taking the game to local schools.

Finnish footy stalwart Kimmo Heikkilä spoke to WFN about the upcoming 2010 season.

With the combined efforts of a local enthusiast and the Welsh ARFL, Britain may have its seventh regional footy competition by the end of this year, based in the region of Cornwall in England's rural south-west.

Cornwall, known in the Cornish language as Kernow, is one of the traditional six "Celtic Nations" alongside Ireland, Wales, Scotland, the Isle of Man and Brittany in France. It is an area known for tourism, with the local population of around half a million being outnumbered almost ten to one by the five million tourists who arrive from the rest of England each year, its attractions including Britain's best surfing at Newquay and Porthtowan.

Former Thanet Bombardier Liam Marsh is coordinating the project to kick off the Kernow ARFL, with an introductory session and practice match with the Cardiff Double Blues currently planned, and hopes for clubs in towns such as Falmouth, Truro, Newquay and Plymouth. Liam took some time to talk to WFN about his plans.

Regional England has seen a great number of new clubs formed in the past few years, with the growth in club numbers lead by the three regional divisions of the ARUK National League, which operated largely separate to AFL Great Britain. 2010 has seen some personnel changes in English footy, and reports indicate that this year the English footy scene will be significantly more united than for some time.

GB Bulldogs coach Mark Pitura told WFN that he is very optimistic about the new structure, saying "AFL Great Britain is more united than ever. All clubs have come underneath this umbrella."

With all footy clubs in England now part of the one structure, last year's ARUK clubs in regional England will form the AFLGB North East, Central & North West and Southern divisions, although they will essentially remain self-governing leagues. Each division will have a main premiership competition featuring five teams, with a number of further development clubs playing friendly fixtures during the season.

World Footy News spoke to a number of key figures from the regional English clubs about the upcoming season.

In the continuing tradition of London clubs touring Europe for pre-season friendlies, AFL London powerhouse the West London Wildcats will take on the Paris Cockerels on April 10th at 2pm in the Bois de Vincennes.

Cyril Talon, president of both the Cockerels and the French National Footy Commission, says the game will be the third-ever 18-a-side full-field match held in France, after Tasmania Montivilliers versus Paris Cockerels in 2000 and Paris Cockerels versus North London Lions in 2009. The game against the Wildcats will also be a good warmup for the second Anzac Cup, to be held in Villers-Bretonneux the Saturday 24th April.

The Paris Cockerels have stamped their dominance on the emerging French footy scene in recent years, and are currently sitting undefeated at the top of the ladder in the French league, a game clear of the Bordeaux Bombers in second.

Further south in France's rugby belt, the Toulouse Crocodiles recently played a promotional game at the halftime break of a professional Rugby League match between Toulouse Olympique and English club Dewsbury, with a crowd of around 800 spectators. The Toulousains have this year already tasted glory, with a win at the inaugural Coupe de Grand Sud tournament, held in Perpignan in February, which saw the Crocodiles meet the other teams from southern France, along with those from Andorra and Catalonia.

This year's Coupe de France club tournament is scheduled for June 26th in Strasbourg, with hosts the Strasbourg Kangaroos hoping to build this year after remaining dormant through the 2009-10 season.