The Chippendham Redbacks entered the ARUK Southern league in 2008, winning only one match in their debut season. In a remarkable transformation, the Redbacks lost only one match this year, last weekend defeating the Bournemouth Demons to win their first-ever Southern Premiership.

This report courtesy of the Chippenham Redbacks.

The nine Irish players involved in the Australian Football League have enjoyed mixed fortunes this season with some players making huge strides forward while others appear to have slipped down the pecking order at their clubs. Pictured is Essendon's 2009 debutant Michael Quinn.

This season saw the first edition of a league dedicated solely to central England, with the rebirth in footy in the cities of Liverpool and Birmingham, and the creation of the first-ever sides from Leeds and Huddersfield.

These four sides, freshly-formed and built almost entirely from local recruits who have learnt the game from scratch, recently completed the inaugural ARUK Central home and away season, with the Huddersfield Rams finishing clear top of the table.

Fighting for the right to face the Rams in the Grand Final on August 16th, the Birmingham Bears and Liverpool Eagles will this weekend face off.

The Liverpool and Birmingham Australian Rules clubs took some time out from preparing for the preliminary to tell WFN a bit more about their respective first-up seasons.

On Saturday 1st August, in the tiny village of Mitteleschenbach in the heart of Franconia (northern Bavaria) Germany, the German Black Eagles and the Czech Lions took the field. Playing according to EU Cup 9-a-side rules, both teams fought it out under the blazing sun – perfect conditions for relaxing at the beach, but quite extreme when playing Aussie Rules – for 4 x 20 minute quarters.

Thanks to German national team coach Luke McBride for this report.

Press release from the AFL

Australian Football League Chief Operating Officer Gillon McLachlan today announced the AFL had agreed to a new and exclusive deal with ESPN for its broadcast rights into the United Kingdom and Ireland for the remainder of 2009 through to the end of the 2011 AFL season.

The agreement will see ESPN air three matches each round of the home and away season(s), as well as a number of Finals, including the Grand Final. All matches will be broadcast on ESPN’s new channel, which is set to launch on Monday 3 August on Sky Channel 417, and will also be available in High Definition via Sky Channel 443. Coverage will kick off with the Round 19 blockbuster between finals contenders Carlton and Geelong on Friday 7 August, live from the MCG.

Wolverhampton has become the latest in a string of cities in the English Midlands to create an Aussie Rules club to join the ARUK's Central Division in time for the 2010 season.

The Wolverhampton Wolverines, as the club will be known, are looking to recruit early with training sessions being planned for the end of this summer. Added to this, regular friendly matches being played over the course of winter 09/10 should see the Wolverines in competitive shape come the season's start in April 2010.

The friendlies will be against established sides such as the 2009 Central Division ladder toppers Huddersfield Rams and second placed Birmingham Bears, as well as other newly-formed teams such as Cambridge Hippos.

The Wolverines' founding member Ian Mitchell has played the 2009 season for the Birmingham Bears. Mitchell tells us "I'm keen to see the sport expand across the Midlands and the UK as a whole, and I see The Wolverines being an excellent starting point for this in Wolverhampton."

The Wolverines are recruiting for players of any level of experience from experts to complete beginners, volunteers to help run the non-playing side of the club and also any potential sponsors or donors to fund the initial set-up of the club.

Anyone interested in playing footy in Wolverhampton can contact the club via their Facebook page.

The Czech Lions will be taking the Autobahn to the town of Mitteleschenbach, near Nürnberg, this weekend for a Central European showdown with the Germany's national team - the Black Eagles.

In a first for Czech footy, this year's Lions squad will be built around locals and other non-Australian talent, with only a handful of Aussies filling the gaps. The Germans for their part will be fielding a team of home-grown talent, as they have done in all tests since 2007.

The August 1st match came about through an offer to host a match of footy by the organisers of the Nürnberg Australian Festival. While 2009 is the first time the festival has included a match of Aussie Rules, the whole event is now in its third year, organised by a group of local businesses - including an Emu Farm - and the local Nürnberg Australian community.

The city of Cambridge hope to join the likes of Derby, Leicester and Wolverhampton in creating a new Aussie Rules team in central England for the 2010 season.

Readers of WFN may also have been following the Footy Almanac a site featuring community football commentary, mainly covering AFL and local league footy in Australia but with a growing number of stories on international footy.

WFN stories to appear on the Footy Almanac in the past few weeks include those on the Tromsø footy club and last week's story on the Czech and Croatian local leagues. However, one from a different source is the article Irish news: Australian footy comp growing in Ireland from Peter Lenaghan, chronicling the current challenges faced by the ARFLI.

Also on the almanac is the "Middle East Correspondent" Rod Gillett. While most of his stories cover country football history in Australia, there are a few about the AFL Middle East, including the formation of a new team in Bahrain, which will bring the AFLME's club tally to seven in the coming season.

Editors of the Almanac are Paul Daffey and John Harms, Daffey being the country and suburban footy reporter from Melbourne newspaper The Age and author of a few books on the subject, inlcuding the well-known collection "Local Rites". Harms is also a writer, with his "Loose Men Everywhere" based on his experiences as an Australian rules fan growing up in the "heathen territory" of country Queensland, a subject footy fans overseas could often relate to.

For the past few seasons, the bulk of matches for the Czech Lions and Croatian Knights has been supplied by the Tri-Nations series they conducted together with the Kangaroos from Austria's capital Vienna.

This year however has seen both clubs shift their focus onto kick-starting domestic competitions, with the Czech AFL playing their fourth match between the All-Stars and Marauders this week, and the Croatian Association of Australian Football now up to six matches and counting between cross-town rivals the Zagreb Hawks and Agram Power in their second local league season.

These developments are part of a wider trend across Europe, where former one-club-countries such as the Netherlands, Norway and Austria are seeing the foundations laid for local comps.