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.

Footy has been reborn in the Spanish capital, with the Madrid Bears coming out of hibernation to take on the city's newly-formed second club, the Móstoles Kangaroos, at the Andrés Torrejón Sports club in Móstoles.

The match held on the 21st of February marked the first round of the Liga de Fútbol Australiano de la Comunidad de Madrid, with the two sides playing for the 'Wombat Cup'.

The opening encounter saw the Bears run out 94-54 victors, although locals report a definite improvement from the less experienced Kangaroos players over the course of the game. Among the Madrid Bears squad on the day were a number of players from the Spain Bulls side which attended the IC 2005 in Melbourne, a positive sign after the club disappeared from the radar of the international footy community over the past few years.

The next match planned between the Bears and Kangaroos has been scheduled for this coming Saturday, dubbed the 'Dingo Cup'. Also on the cards is a proposed 5-team national league, which would see the two Madrid area teams take on the Catalan clubs of Barcelona and Valls and the new club of the Catalan-speaking microstate Andorra in tournament play as the year progresses.

In the meantime, the Bears' new website at MadridBears.com is under construction and has some info up for Spanish-speaking readers.

The Scottish Australian Rules Football League (SARFL) offered its first taste of football in 2009 last Saturday when Glasgow and Edinburgh faced off in the annual preseason friendly fixture at The Meadows, Edinburgh. The SARFL has also announced the date of the 2009 Haggis Cup, with the welcome mat out for teams around the region.

Fresh off the back of a disappointing 2008 both on and off the field, the first hitout of the year suggests that 2009 will be a very different proposition for the SARFL. A number of new players featured for each side, both locals and Australians, with many more expected to be available as the season proper approaches.

Edinburgh won the match by 5 goals, showing much cleaner skills with boot and hand on the route to goal and in taking better advantage of scoring opportunities. However, Glasgow's less experienced side held their opponents in the second and last quarters with solid work both in defence and in the middle of the park, some poor finishing costing them on the scoreboard. What the game showed is that while Edinburgh still holds a clear advantage over Glasgow, 2009 should see a much more competitive season.

Added to this is the very welcome news that the northern city of Aberdeen will be fielding its first side in the SARFL this year, breaking the Glasgow/Edinburgh rivalry and monopoly which has endured up to this point.

As with any overseas league which does not have a large Aussie expat community, recruitment is key to the health of the SARFL, and a number of recruitment initiatives are being used this pre-season, and are expected to lead to greater stability and competitiveness within the league and individual clubs.

In other SARFL matters, it has been announced that the Haggis Cup will again be held in 2009, this time on 23 May. The host city will again be Glasgow and any sides wishing to compete are welcome to email info@sarfl.org.uk to express their interest.

Thanks go to Eddie McAvinchey for this story.

The organisers are still counting, but possibly as much as £10,000 (AU$22,000) was raised as London’s ex-pat community came out in their droves to show their support for the communities devastated by the Victorian Bushfires, for a special Australian Rules Charity match organised by the six Premiership Division clubs of the AFL London.

Over 3,000 people turned up at Clapham Common, in inner London, to see the North of the River side clubs (West London Wildcats, London Swans and North London Lions) play the South of the River clubs (Wandsworth Demons, Putney Magpies and Wimbledon Hawks). Many of those who played in, and watched, come from some of the hardest hit areas.

Volunteers collected donations for the Red Cross Bushfires appeal and proceeds from the sales of food and drink were also donated in the specially organised event. “The ex-pat community here in London really saw this as an opportunity to stand together and show those in Victoria and Australia that despite the distance, we don’t forget and feel just the pain just like those at home. Sport, as Australians know, brings people together in a very special way” said Peter Romanis, President of the West London Wildcats.

The match itself was played in good spirits, with glorious sunshine and London’s warmest day of the year, making conditions perfect for football.

There are numerous other fundraising activities taking place over the coming weeks across London at the Australian themed Walkabout pubs. The Shepherds Bush Walkabout donated ₤1,000 to the charity match.

For the record, the South of the River defeated the North of the River by 19 points.

2009 will see the launch of Germany's sixth Australian Football club, with the Stuttgart Emus set to take the field in the league's brand-new second division.

As with the ARFLI, the Australian Football League Germany has seen a growth in numbers and playing standard over the past few years among the strong clubs.

While this is an important indicator of good progress on the level of individual clubs, the gap between the top and bottom of the table can make it hard for new teams to enter the league.

In Germany, the Berlin Crocodiles in particular have been on the wrong end of a few large scorelines, and the Strasbourg Roos, known in their sole AFLG season as the Black Devils, found the going very tough.

The AFLG now look set to follow a similar model to the Irish in 2009, launching a second division to cater for both newcomers and the reserve teams from the stronger clubs. The Premier Division will see Frankfurt, Hamburg, Rheinland and Munich battle it out for the title, while the Second Division will see Berlin and Stuttgart field their senior teams, along with Rheinland and Munich's reserves.