Ireland's Green Machine will travel to London to take on the British Bulldogs in the curtain-raiser for this year's AFL game at Brit Oval on the 8th October. The AFL match features AFL grand finalists West Coast Eagles taking their Western Australian rivalry to London against the Fremantle Dockers. In the many years of AFL exhibition games at the Oval this is the first time there will be a curtain-raiser involving local footy.

The Skåne Grand Final between Port Malmö Maulers vs Lund Magpies will be on Saturday September 24th at Limhamnsfältet, Malmö at 14:30. There will be a curtain-raiser before this at 13:00 between the Helsingborg West Raptors and debutante Göteborg Beserkers. The Beserkers were formed in 2003, but are yet to play a match against outside opposition.

With the withdrawal of the Spanish side organised through the Madrid Bears, an announcement has been made by the Lliga de Futbol Australià de Catalunya (Australian Football League of Catalonia) that they will attend in their place.

At the third attempt after returning from the football wilderness, the Farum Cats finally clinched their second DAFL premiership yesterday with a hard-fought 44 point win over the impressive underdogs, South Sweden Saints.

The final scoreline read Farum 15.16(106) to South Sweden 7.20(62). Full scores can be found on The Footy Record.

As reported recently in O'hAilpin brothers to get senior list promotions in 2006?, Irish recruit Setanta O'hAilpin has continued his good form with Carlton's VFL feeder club the Northern Bullants. In our last update on his VFL matches "Carlos" had been called up to play a one-off match with the Blues in the AFL. Here we review his match-by-match form since returning to the Bullants and keep track of how younger brother Aisake has been doing.

Danish side Farum are well-known for having the biggest juniors competition in Europe, maintaining a strong partnership arrangement with Geelong College and their senior side now reaping the benefits of a large contingent of highly-skilled young Danish players.

The Farum Cup is the annual lightning premiership for the club's junior players, this year held on August 28th with children in the age range 9-12 years playing.

Chiswick Rugby Club in London will host the inaugral EU Cup 9-a-side tournament on Sunday, October 9th, featuring a mixture of club sides and national squads from countries around Europe.

The Australian Football League Germany grew to 5 clubs in 2004 with the commencement of the Düsseldorf Lions, and in that year over 120 players pulled on the boots in the course of the season. This year they're on track for as many as 150 having played at least one match and have at least two potential new clubs for the coming seasons. However, despite having more players actually playing than Spain (who attended the International Cup) and Sweden (who've started playing internationals against Denmark), the Germans have generally kept to themselves, with only 'scratch' national teams having played any outside opposition.

World Footy News spoke with German footy pioneer Malte Schudlich about how the scene is developing in this relatively reclusive footy nation.

In the BARFL London Premiership Grand Final held last Saturday, September 3rd, the West London Wildcats overcame a three-goal defecit at the last break to the defeat the Wimbledon Hawks by seven points, 9.14.68 to 9.7.61.

In the Conference Grand Final, the Shepherds Bush Raiders hung on for a three-point win against the Clapham Demons, 11.12.78 to 11.9.75.

Full match reports are available here.

In the Regional Premiership held on the 23rd of July, the Nottingham Scorpions 10.9.69 defeated the Bristol Dockers 8.6.54 for their first ever flag.

10am this Sunday, 11th of September will see the Paris Cockerels and Strasbourg Kangaroos clash in the first club match between two French sides beyond scratch games played in the late 90s. The match will be a friendly held as a closer to a training session at the Hall Omnisport Rugby Grounds in Cergy-Pontoise for the French side heading to London for the 9-a-side EU Cup.

The Paris Cockerels have played occasional games in recent times against opposition as the Brussels Saints and in the Central Europe AFL championships, but have not played a match thus far in 2005. The Strasbourg Kangaroos are reportedly hoping to join the AFL Germany to give them the possibility of regular league play, situated as they are on the German-French border and closer to three of the five German clubs than to the French capital.