The Solna Axemen were the toast of Swedish football last Saturday, after winning the VB Cup for the second year in a row. In what proved to be an exceptionally entertaining tournament, Solna remained undefeated right throughout the competition, before triumphing over Stockholm rivals Södermalm in a hard fought Grand Final.

This year’s tournament was held in the town of Falun in the north of Sweden, and is only the second ever after last year’s inaugural VB Cup in Karlstad. This year’s tournament, which consists of 24 minute, 9-a-side matches between club sides from all over Sweden, was played out by seven teams: Falun, Södermalm, Solna, Bromma, Helsingborg, Port Malmö and Karlstad. In addition the competition also attracted some fringe players from Oslo, Göteborg and Östersund.

Thanks to Nic Townsend from the AFL Sweden for this report.

Tromsø is the largest city in northern Norway, roughly on the same latitude as the northern coast of Alaska. The town is far enough north that when the sun sets in October it doesn't comes up again until well into the following year. It's also the new home of the most northerly footy club in the world.

Last month, Swede Johan Julin and Tasmanian Ben L. Jago kicked off Aussie Rules in the town, with three social matches played to date. A group of recruits, mainly Swedish and Norwegian, but also including a Canadian, a New Zealander and Dutchman, have been taught the rules and taken part in matches in a park with ski poles serving as goal posts.

World Footy News spoke with Julin about the group's progress so far.

A number of (non-Aussie) former members of the Danish Australian Football League are currently making headlines in spreading Aussie Rules across Europe. In the Norwegian city of Tromsø, Helsingborg Saints old boy Johan Julin is part of a group founding the world's most northerly club. In Andorra, British expat Doug Pate is running a club. Páll Finnsson, the Icelandic captain of the Denmark Vikings at IC08, this weekend pulled on the boots at the French Championships.

Back in Iceland, Páll's brother Jón Hrói Finnsson has also been trying to get the sport started since returning from his stint playing footy in Denmark. It seems his efforts are paying off, with school clinics underway and a senior side in formation in the town of Ólafsfjörður.

Around 400km away in the Icelandic capital Reykjavík, a group of around a dozen senior players have been kicking the footy on a weekly basis since May, under the leadership of Friðgeir Torfi Ásgeirsson, another Icelander who learnt to play in the DAFL.

A while back, we caught up with Gavin Mahoney - AFL London's first fulltime employee, focused at growing footy in and around the capital in England. This month, we speak to Rick Shrowder, employed by Aussie Rules UK to support the leagues outside the city in regional England.

With established leagues in the South and North-East of England, along with new clubs forming to grow a Northern league, Rick's territory is a lot more spread-out and without the large population of Australians present in the capital who can help bring that initial level of experienced enthusiasm. The regional game is based around 9-a-side teams, utilising existing facilities such as rugby posts and pitches to make the beautiful game accessible to a wider audience.

A story in the Country Footy section of the Weekly Times highlights a couple of French lads making an impact for Wickliffe-Lake Bolac in the Mininera & District League, country Victoria, coincidentally only about 100 km from Warrnambool, site of the country round of the 2008 International Cup.

In the first match of Australian rules football between two Dutch teams, the Utrecht Saints came up against the Rest-of-Holland components of the Flying Dutchmen.

The nine-a-side match at the Olympos Sportcentrum in Utrecht was played on May 9th in sunny conditions, with excited supporters clamouring for a spot in the sun while the two sides clashed.

Right from the first bounce, the Flying Dutchmen, composed of players from the Eindhoven, Amsterdam and Den Haag sides, took control of the match. The Utrecht Saints for their part had four first-timers, who put in impressive performances which demonstrated the progress made in just a few weeks of training.

The second and third quarters saw the Rest of Holland increase their lead, with their own collection of new players acquitting themselves well in their first match.

The final term saw the Saints stage a comeback and keep the game interesting. With four goals, they won the quarter, but with strong defence from the Rest of Holland the game was never in doubt.

The match was the first for the Saints as a stand-alone team, the first of four planned clubs for the DAFA's local league. The other three sides are still on the search for new players, but leagues and clubs across Europe have regularly shown that establishing a local competition has been the best recruiting tool.

Final score: (Rest of the) Flying Dutchmen 14.9 (93) def Utrecht Saints 8.10 (58)

Round One of the AFLG culminated on the weekend of May 9th, with teams in the league's new Second Division taking the field.

The largest Berlin side ever battled the Rheinland B-team through four quarters of intense footy, which saw the Lions manage a 23-point win despite four Lions going to hospital in unrelated accidents.

The Stuttgart Emus in their first official game showed that although they may be new, they’re a team to be reckoned with, beating Munich B’s by 11 points.

In Division One, Rheinland demonstrated they’re still the team to beat, taking out Frankfurt by 9 goals. Up in Hamburg, Munich had to give everything they had to hold on to their 2 point lead late in the last quarter.

Luke McBride from the AFLG spoke with World Footy News about the league's new 2-division structure.

The Irish league's experimental two tier competition is off to a good start, with a record 10 clubs in action. For many years ARFLI has been predicting new clubs but ultimately only been treading water with the new boys either not materialising, not lasting very long, or being offset by a club folding somewhere else. So after a promising start with the first match in Ireland in 2000 and an impressive 7 teams by 2005, by 2008 the total had dropped to 5 clubs taking to the park during the season.

So far the separation into Premiership and Conference divisions seems to have been a successful step towards addressing the problem. Rather than simply have separate regions but then none having very many teams, ARFLI have gone for overlapping concepts. Below we list the teams and describe the interesting new structure.

On Saturday 9th, Paris hosted the second round of the inaugural French League. As with the previous round, two games were organised that day.

The first game saw the host team, the Cockerels, taking on the Bombers from Bordeaux. Thanks to their strong midfielders and better skills the Cockerels quickly took control of the game. The Bordeaux players did not surrender and kept on fighting, but could not match the Parisians' play.

Final score: Paris 30.14 (194) d Bordeaux 6.10 (46)

The second game, the Strasbourg Kangourous against the Montpellier Fire Sharks, was much more evenly contested than the first. Despite leading on the scoreboard during the whole game, the Kangourous were never able to secure a good scoring advantage. During the third quarter, the Fire Sharks gave the Kangourous a tough contest and almost took the lead. But the Alsacians were holding on, and in the beginning of the fourth quarter, they scored four goals in a row, giving them the victory.

Final score: Strasbourg 13.14 (92) d Montpellier 11.18 (84)

The Birmingham Bears made the long trip up to Newcastle at the weekend looking to gain some experience in the ARUK National Cup before the start of the league season next week. All but one of the team were going in as rookies, having never played a competitive game before. We were drawn in Pool C, containing Huddersfield Rams and hosts Newcastle Centurions. We knew that we were up against it, with our best chance in all likelihood being against newbies Huddersfield Rams. Thanks to Mat Mitchell for this report.