The West London Wildcats will be the first BARFL club to launch a regular-season juniors team next year, with the Wildcats planning to enter an under-16s team in a new London junior league organised by Aussie Rules UK.

As it stands, the Wildcats will be joined by five school teams from around the London area, with the league to be played under full-contact rules with boys in the age range of 14-16, first bounce to be April next year. The Wildcats' main source of junior talent is via Featherstone High School in Ealing, who are connected with another 30 primary and 16 secondary schools in the area who are interested in running pograms.

Although no other BARFL clubs have entered a team so far, Wildcats stalwart Matt Glynn explains that the plan for the first season may see some of the schools being aligned with other BARFL clubs, with a view to them entering their own teams in future.

The British Bulldogs have shown themselves to be greatly improved and are widely tipped to be a force at the upcoming International Cup, however most clubs still find recruiting of local players a challenge. With pathways for junior talent to develop, the next few years may see British footy take a sizeable leap forward.

AFL clubs have now lodged their final player lists prior to the main National Draft on Saturday November 24. As expected, several of the recent Gaelic football recruits from Ireland have been added to official Rookie Lists, which locks the players in with their respective clubs for up to two years and allows them to be elevated to the senior list should there be a long term injury.

Rookie listed were County Mayo's Pearce Hanley (Brisbane Lions), County Armagh's Kevin Dyas (Collingwood) and County Carlow's Brendan Murphy (Sydney).

As reported earlier, Aisake O'hAilpin joins his brother Setanta on Carlton's senior list, and Martin Clarke stays on Collingwood's books having been temporarily promoted last season when a fellow Pie went down with injury.

Remaining on St Kilda's Rookie List for a second year is South African born Luke van Rheenen.

The following article is courtesy of ARFLI's Public Relations Officer, Danny Persse:

On a clear Autumn Saturday the 20th of October 2007 the Dublin Saints unveiled their new residence An Cumaan Parnell by Dublin Airport with an off season scratch fixture against 2007 ARFLI premiership runners-up the South Dublin Swans.

Both teams lined out numbering many of Ireland’s international players recently returned from triumph in Denmark with Roger Clarke the Irish international coach donning a Saints guernsey.

BBC Sport have a tremendous 30 minute documentary on the rise of Collingwood's Irish recruit Martin Clarke. The story looks at his junior days of Gaelic football through to his first successful season at the Pies (with coach Mick Malthouse hailing Marty's amazing achievements), and his end of year return home where he again donned his local colours as well as bringing some footy to his former school.

The video gives great insight into how much Clarke is already missed back home and what a talent he has for both sports. It also demonstrates the incredible array of resources Collingwood have to develop a young player - from top quality gym facilities to an altitude training room and video analysis of player body mechanics. Some Irish officials assure themselves that many "Irish experiments" will fail in Australia and return after a year or two. But the modern era of recruitment is very much different to when Jim Stynes was in the minority in making the transition back in the 1980s. The professional scouting and extra resources could well see the success rate become very high, and early indications are that it has happened already.

Unfortunately at time of writing there appears to be an audio synchronisation issue, but the documentary can be viewed here: Clarke Rules, OK!. Thanks to Aussie Rules Wales' Bryce Stone for the tip off.

We've also updated the International Players in Australia page with some photos of the earlier players, courtesy of the AFL.

The wave of recent Irish recruits to AFL clubs have begun arriving in Australia for pre-season training. Although mainstream Aussie media has been slow to pick up on the development of Australian Football internationally, because the men from Ireland are headed for AFL clubs there has been no shortage of articles.

Most of the players have been added to the International Rookie List for the respective clubs, meaning they are outside of the main squad lists, but can play for the clubs' feeder teams, such as in the VFL, and be called up to senior duty if a long term injury occurs.

The first-ever Dragon Cup between Aussie Rules UK's England and Wales representative sides was held last weekend in Cardiff, with the England Dragonslayers running out 5-goal winners over the Wales Red Dragons.

After the national anthems and a minute's silence for Welsh rugby legend Ray Gravell who died during the week, a hard-hitting match was underway with the Welshmen surprising the more experienced English team with their ferocity at the ball. Led by captain Jack Wells, the Welsh were well in the game until the Dragonslayers pulled away in the last quarter.

England's Mark Todd kicked five goals in a best-on-ground performance, with Daniel Morgan-Kane the best for the Red Dragons.

The Denmark Vikings played a practise match yesterday against the DAFL All-Stars, with the All-Stars featuring the best Australians from the Danish league - and a special guest in Brownlow medallist Jimmy Bartel. Despite the highest-profile ring-in ever in Danish footy, the All-Stars went down to the Vikings quite convincingly - the Vikings winning 9.11.65 to 2.7.19.

The match was held after the DAFL's AGM, which saw Ian Hill become the new president, Jens Alsted Hansen vice-president, Ingmar "Terry" Lundquist secretary and Erik Krolmark treasurer. The biggest change will be the expansion of the Premier League to 7 sides, with the Vikings sets to compete as a stand-alone team in preparation for the International Cup.

After considering the question of fielding a second Premier League team for a number of years, Farum have compromised by allowing the national team (made up of around 50% Farum players) to join for the coming season. The Cats will continue to be repesented by Farum's Australian players and their next crop of young Danish players not in the main Vikings squad. It is hoped that for 2009 and beyond, the second Farum team will continue to participate in DAFL in its own right.

Full scores and stats for the Vikings vs Allstars match available at the Footy Record.

Aussie Nathan Sawicki, a member of the Finland AFL, featured on the front page of The Saturday Age's employment section this weekend. We're pretty sure that's him in the Carlton jumper, we're guessing the man to his left sporting the Finland Icebreakers jumper is a local.

The article inside mainly talks about Sawicki's life as an expatriate Australian in Finland and the employment and study chances for Aussies in the Scandinavian nation - with a small mention of the growing Aussie Rules (and rugby and cricket) scene.

The profile of international footy has beefed up considerably in the past 12 months in the Melbourne media. While it still gets written off by a large percentage of the public, the "cultural cringe" seems to be fading a bit, helped along by growing realisation about things like the AFL South Africa programs and the Demons' China project.

If anyone from Finland wants to provide details on the exact identity of the player in the photo, feel free to leave a comment on this article!

The trickle of Irish players into the Australian Football League is set to become a flood in 2008. Carlton may be about to take the recruiting experiment to a new level, and what had been a curiosity could now become a major phenomenon, set to shape the on-field destinies of some clubs and possibly even bring on the possibility of true international Australian Football competition for Australia.