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.

Norway will soon see its third club take the field, with the newly-created Ås Battlers set to take on the Oslo Trolls on August 23.

After a slow start to the season in the Oslo area, the match will be Norway's first domestic inter-club clash. The team in Ås, a small town just outside the Norwegian capital, started training earlier this year under the leadership of Adam O'Toole.

Since 2008, Barcelona's Aussie Rules club the Cornellà Bocs have counted among their number a player by the name of Juan Carlos Herrera. The Spanish name doesn't seem out of place at first glance, but Herrera's background is a little different from the usual kind of recruit found kicking the footy in Catalonia - he's actually from Bolivia, and possibly even more surprisingly, he's just one of a growing number of Latin Americans who have picked up the Australian game in Europe.

With large numbers of Latinos migrating to Spain for better career opportunities, the Catalan footy league has counted Brazilians, Argentines and Ecuadorians in its ranks over the years, with the Catalonia-based Argentines even fielding a squad at last year's WAFF World 9s in Valls.

In France too, last week's French Cup saw Venezuelan Marlys Maldonaldo pull on the boots for the Toulouse Crocodiles. A search through the Footy Record reveals a number of Brazilians have kicked the footy in Sweden, and the current games record holder for the Helsinki Heatseekers is one Fernando Leon, a Colombian who also made the trip to Melbourne last year as part of the Finland Icebreakers squad at the 2008 International Cup.

Having left his home town of Santa Cruz in Bolivia ten years ago to search for work in Spain, Herrera's journey to become probably the first Bolivian to take up Australian rules football began when he accompanied a French friend of his to see the Bocs play a match in Valls.

Preparations for this year's EU Cup in Samobor, Croatia are well underway, with 12 sides having confirmed by the July 1st deadline. Aussie Rules Europe have capped the final squad number at 16 national teams.

Reportedly on the list so far for Europe's 9-a-side Championships are Central Europe's Austria, Czech Republic and hosts Croatia, in addition to fellow continental Europeans Spain, Catalonia, France, Germany, Finland and the Netherlands.

From the British Isles, Scotland and the reigning champions England Dragonslayers have confirmed.

The most surprising announcement is the exciting news of a confirmation of attendance from Russia - a country so far unknown to the international footy scene. WFN will have some information on this development as soon as we know more!

It's still an open race who will fill the final four places, with previous champions Sweden not yet locked in, nor the Welsh who are still to make their EU Cup debut despite playing a number of tests against the Dragonslayers in recent times. The newer squads from Iceland and Norway have also indicated an interest in coming.

The usual EU Cup conference will this year feature a meeting with AFL Europe's Gerard Murphy. While this reporter is merely speculating about what is on the agenda, I'll be optimistic that this will see steps towards greater collaboration between all sides in Europe and the creation of a European governing body.

Our readers will also be very interested to hear if there is any further discussion about an 18-a-side championship under full IC rules in future, featuring the big guns of Ireland, Denmark, British Bulldogs or possibly even the Peres Peace Team.

AFL agent Ricky Nixon is planning to further his interest in the Irish market by establishing coaching clinics in Irish primary schools. His exploits are currently being told in a three part documentary on Irish television called ‘The Oz factor’.

Nixon who has previously been very unpopular amongst the Gaelic Athletic Association establishment has claimed that “This will probably put the fear of God into GAA people but we’re starting to look at potential talent at a younger age. And if the door was shut in my face in Ireland in the past I expect it will be slammed in my face now.”

Four schools, whom Nixon has declined to name, have agreed to the programme which begins when the new school term gets underway in September. Nixon is aware of potential criticism but remains unrepentant. “People will overreact to these clinics and will insinuate that I’m only here to fleece your country of its young talent, but the reality is that I’ll be lucky to get one layer from this initiative. I’m doing it to drum up more interest in the AFL in Ireland and get more kids au fait with the skills of our game from an early age.” says Nixon. “An Irish guy actually came to me with the proposal and he’s got clearance from the schools involved. We’re starting off with four clinics and the schools are more than happy to go along with it.”