Prior to their first game in this year's French league, the Paris Cockerels played two friendly matches, with an 18-a-side match against the North London Lions in Paris, and the second one against the Flying Dutchmen in Amsterdam.

Although the Cockerels went down in both matches, they put in some good performances, even leading the traditionally strong North London side with ten minutes to go in their match. Here is a brief report of those games.

The Irish Warriors started their season on a winning note with a hard fought victory on April 4th over their cross channel rivals the Great Britain Bulldogs. In the fine settings of St David’s college Artane, Ireland got off to a slow start but finished well to run out 8.6 (54) - 4.9 (33) winners.

In a much changed side to the one that went to the International Cup in Melbourne last year, Ireland fielded three new caps in Donnacha Reilly, Gary Green and Danny Burke.

This report courtesy of the Australian Rules Football League of Ireland.

On the 29th of March, Aussie Rules in France took a step forward with the start of the first-ever national championship. Around 60 footy enthusiasts gathered in Montpellier to enjoy a nice day of footy. Two games were played during the day, which saw the Bordeaux Bombers playing against the Strasbourg Kangaroos, and the Paris Cockerels taking on the Montpellier Fire Sharks.

Hailing from County Longford, Michael Quinn is set to make a remarkable debut on Sunday on the other side of the world for the Essendon Football Club. It will be the fastest transition to senior AFL ranks of all the Irish recruits to have come so far. Few would have thought that Marty Clarke would be bettered, yet here we have it in Round 2 of the 2009 season. Quinn has done plenty to impress his adopted club working overtime to develop his skills, fitness and body to give him the first shot at the big time. Quinn showed his determination in a final quarter burst in the NAB cup game against the Bulldogs - but many of those Irishmen who have come before him have been given a taste of things in preseason almost as a reward for making the big transition. But make no mistake any match for premiership points is no token reward and Essendon fans and the folk of County Longford will be watching his debut closely.

Another who might take a glance at Quinn's debut might be agent Ricky Nixon, who reportedly rubbished Essendon's trialing and signing of Quinn who was not identified as part of Nixon's scouting network in Ireland last year (and Essendon did not join Nixon's program either). Quinn's success might provide a rethink on how Nixon and his scouts look at the attributes of potential Irish talent. Quinn has been named in the forward pocket for the match against the Fremantle Dockers kicking off at 1.10pm tomorrow at Docklands Stadium.

While outsiders generally associate the word "Catalonia" with the autonomous region in Spain centered around Barcelona, the Països Catalans, or "Catalan Countries" also extend north into the region of Rousillon in southern France and the tiny nation of Andorra in the Pyrenees, known for being the only nation where Catalan is the sole official language.

This year, the Lliga de Futbol Australià de Catalunya will span all three nations of the Catalan-speaking region, with the Cornellà Bocs and Belfry Valls from the autonomous region of Catalonia in Spain, one team from the Aussie Rules community in Andorra, and the newly formed Perpignan Tigers from the French side of the border.

After Valls kicked off the year by winning a pre-season tournament in Barcelona last weekend, the first round of the LFAC will be held on the weekend of the 18th and 19th of April. The league will play 6 home-and-away rounds, with the grand final to be held on June 21st.

The LFAC thus joins a growing crowd of multi-national leagues in Europe - the DAFL having included both Swedish and Danish teams for a number of years and the Croatian-Austrian-Czech Championship also being able to lay claim to being a league across three nations.

After many years of struggle, France is finally ready to host its first national championship. The national league will take the form of a series of tournament rounds played in the different cities which are home to clubs, Montpellier having the honour to host the historic first round this weekend.

The four established clubs of Paris, Strasbourg, Bordeaux and Montpellier will compete in the first season, with the new clubs in Perpignan, Aix en Provence and Toulouse hoping to appear at the Coupe de France tournament to be held in Bordeaux in July.

Read on for a preview of the four teams involved in the inaugural national competition.

In the first article in this series, we mainly discussed with Malte Schudlich what AFL Germany would like to see from an AFL Europe body. Today we get opinions from the Danish Australian Football League's Ian Hill, the French Commission National de Football Australien's Marc Jund, and Aussie Rules Europe's Philip Porublev.

Aussie Rules Europe has announced that the 2009 EU Cup will be held on Saturday, October 3rd in the town of Samobor, just outside the Croatian capital Zagreb.

This will be the second edition of Europe's biggest 9-a-side representative tournament to be held in eastern Europe, after the 2008 cup was held in Prague.

The Croats were impressive on debut at the 2008 EU Cup and will be eager to take out the main prize in front of their home crowd this year. For their part, England's Dragonslayers will also be eager to defend their title.

Some new teams may be on the cards, with the Welsh and Andorran leagues hoping to make their debut after having a few seasons of domestic competition under their belts. Further east, players from Poland, Lithuania and Hungary helped fill out sides in last year's cup and organisers are hopeful of seeing one or more of those having a stand-alone side come October.

Late last year we posted the story AFL Europe proposed on a suggestion for the creation of AFL Europe and an associated true 18-a-side European Championships.

While the northern winter put footballs back in the cupboard until the snow melted, the concept of AFL Europe continued to be debated. Pinning down opinions on the record has been difficult, but the range of views has slowly become clearer.

In a series of articles we'll look at the shape the body may take and some of the views that have been expressed. At this stage it appears several of the larger European leagues are on side with the kind of proposal put forward by ARFLI and the AFL. Perhaps just as interesting is the more cautious view from one of Europe's middle leagues.

The newly-formed Perpignan Tigers have competed in their first game, against the Montpellier Firesharks on the 21st of February. The match was the first game in the Catalan city of Perpignan since 2006, when footy was first played with the creation of the short-lived St Esteve Saints.

The result was also a milestone for Montpellier, their 45-point win the club's first victory.