The stories and speculation as to where, when and by whom Australian rules has been played in Britain have been discussed at great length. A thriving league is said by many to have existed in the Clyde area of Scotland around World War I, although others claim the league is an urban legend. Similarly, there is much speculation as to whether footy could have gained - or maybe even did gain - a foothold around the turn of the 20th century with a touring British Lions rugby tour playing some matches under Australian rules while on tour.

Matches at Oxford and Cambridge Universities have been played for many decades, although neither institution has ever taken the sport past an annual novelty fixture or entered a side in the BARFL or ARUK.

But there was also a league - the Australian Rules Football League in England - which existed in the 1960s and 70s, supported by "Professional Australian in Britain" Rolf Harris among others. This league got a mention in the obituary of one Michael Cyril Hall, a Western Australian who died in May this year.

The West London Wildcats have again crushed their rivals to win two of the three senior Grand Finals in the finale to the British Australian Rules Football League's 2007 season. The Wildcats were home by 90 points over the Wandsworth Demons in the Premiership League after their second side, the Sheperds Bush Raiders (pictured at left), knocked over Wandsworth's second team, the Clapham Demons, by 46 points in the Conference League final. It wasn't all doom and gloom for Wandsworth, as their South London squad savoured victory by 31 points against the Wildcats' third side, the Ealing Emus, to end the inaugural Social League season.

Eleven teams are currently scheduled to take to the pitch for this year's EU Cup, with a diverse range of team backgrounds. Although this year's cup will include a quota of non-Australians in the squads, there is great variation between the local content of teams - some based heavily around Australians, some consisting entirely of locals. The selection processes relfect the difference stages of development the clubs display - some teams have active local leagues and a formal selection process, some have to work pretty hard to get fifteen guys together for the tournament.

WFN recently caught up with Pere Casan from Catalonia, Marc Jund from France and Israel Barker from Finland to see how their preparations are going.

The Newcastle Centurions and their founder Rick Shrowder were in the news this week, with a summary of the first season for the Aussie Rules UK northern league and a preview of this weekend's grand final in Newcastle's "the Journal". Shrowder, who played for SANFL club Norwood until he was around 20, talks about footy in the area and his plans for the future, including taking the Centurions from a social-based side to more of an organised club.

Full article can be read here.

The Reading Kangaroos are a well-established, fairly well travelled UK footy club. Based 40 miles West of London, England, the club has enjoyed success in the BARFL regional league (2 Grand Final wins), the Nordic Sheep Station Cup (3 wins) and has played in Denmark, Sweden, France and the US. This year, the club made the step up to the London Conference, a 16-a-side competition with a 14 Aussie/2 EU player split. Being outside the capital, it’s tough for regional clubs to field anywhere near that number, but it does enable more British players to play against, and learn from, their more experienced Antipodean cousins.

This report from Reading Roos President Adam Bennett.

Regular readers will recall that the Manchester Mosquitoes were set to host the 2007 Brit Cup, the annual event for British and other EU players to compete purely against each other, but due to flooding the tournament was transferred to London. Kat Conner, the Mozzies' President, explained at the time that the club lost money over the loss of the event after they had gone to great lengths to ensure facilities were in place. Other clubs understand the effort that goes into such preparations and shared Manchester's disappointment. At the time Manchester and at least one other group expressed a hope that something could be arranged later in the season, and this is it.

The club is hosting a carnival from 12 noon on 8th September in Manchester at Turn Moss. Conner explained that the carnival is open to all Aussie Rules team from across the country (and no doubt any from further afield), with entries needed by COB 24th August. So far they have teams from Wales, Scotland, Reading, the British Bulldogs national squad and of course the Mozzies themselves. "It's a 12 a side comp with teams of 18 (6 on the bench), max 8 Aussies per team".

More information will appear on www.manchesteraussierules.com in the next few weeks. Note also that in our Brit Cup story we reported some suggested improvements to the tournament from Wales' Bryce Stone, and said we'd bring you a full report later. Bryce has decided that although those suggestions were meant to be constructive it's probably best to keep them out of the public arena and we will respect that decision.

The Finland Ice Breakers played a 9-a-side friendly against Sweden last weekend, and although the Finns went down 151-55, the game created a fair amount of interest in the western town of Halikko (population 9,491) and drew a crowd of around 150 enthusiastic locals. The game also featured the first time a 100% Finnish team has taken the pitch in the Ice Breakers jumper, albeit only for the first quarter, with over 30 Finnish players now on the lists of the two Finnish footy clubs so far.

World Footy News spoke with Finland AFL president Izzy Barker about the game and plans for Finnish footy, including next year's Finnish domestic league and the International Cup.

In the second match of the 2007 Northern European tri-nations, Denmark has thumped Germany by 174 points at Farum, 27.14.176 to 0.2.2, with the Germans unable to register a goal against their northern neighbours for the second year running. Nevertheless it was a much improved effort by Germany, who refused a Danish request that they play some Australians in order to make the game more competitive. The German team, although missing 10 of the 24 players who made up the squad that defeated Sweden in Berlin, is rated as having improved greatly this year under coach David Mudge, and should continue to make steps forward in the future.

In recent articles on the relationship between the AFL (Australia) and GAA (Ireland) regarding International Rules and the so-called "poaching" of young Gaelic football players from Ireland, we've suggested that the one piece of leverage the GAA has to restrict the flow of players has been the International Rules series. As the AFL is keen to maintain it, they've been prepared to at least put an age limit on the recruitment of young Irishmen to AFL clubs via the draft or international rookie list. Whereas young potential recruits from outside of Australia can be added to a club's international rookie list from 15 years old, for Ireland the minimum is 18, and full entry to the AFL at 19.

The AFL and GAA are set to meet in Melbourne in October, and if the International Rules ban is extended there are suggestions that the age restrictions put in place to satisfy the GAA could be removed - this would most likely result in an even greater level of poaching and reduce AFL-GAA relations to a new low. It seems the relationship between the two sporting bodies is more finely balanced than ever before - will the GAA be conciliatory to restore the IR series and maintain its leverage with the AFL, or will they maintain a hardline stance and risk an escalation of the player drain?