The AFL today announced East Coast Eagles and Sydney University have been invited to join the North East Australian Football League (NEAFL) next season. The two AFL Sydney clubs have been through an extensive application process over the last two months and will now each seek the formal approval of their members before accepting the invitation.

If successful, East Coast and Sydney University will become the first AFL Sydney clubs to join NEAFL’s Eastern Conference, making it a nine-team competition in 2012. The Eastern Conference currently includes the Sydney Swans reserves and GWS GIANTS (next year their reserves as they join the AFL) as well as five Canberra-based clubs.

The pre-eminent second tier football competition in NSW/ACT will provide players with national exposure with cross-conference games between some of the ten Queensland and Northern Territory teams making up NEAFL’s Northern Conference.

Premier Colin Barnett announced yesterday that Perth’s new multi-purpose stadium would be built on the Burswood Peninsula and is scheduled for completion in 2018.  The new Perth Stadium will have the third-biggest capacity in Australia and will be the second largest AFL home stadium.

 It will have a capacity of 60,000 seats with provision for future expansion to 70,000 seats in the style of Melbourne’s Etihad Stadium, with similar views, amenities and comfort.  This capacity range will more than adequately provide for both members and corporate seating and generous general admission and visiting team supporters.

New South Wales Minister for Sport and Recreation, Graham Annesley, and AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou today announced the 2011 NAB AFL Draft would be held in Western Sydney on Thursday November 24.

The AFL's 18th club - the Greater Western Sydney Giants - will join the competition for the 2012 season and Minister Annesley said he was excited the Draft, which will welcome the bulk of the new talent to the game's newest club, will be held in the club's back yard.

Jan Cooper may have what is arguably the most difficult job in football - as the AFL’s Female Football Development Manager. Recently the AFL has made a huge push for female football development in its bid to bring a Women’s Football League to Australian televisions by 2020 and Jan Cooper is at the front of this charge.

She is responsible for taking the sport from its traditional roots as a “boys only” game and developing it into something attractive to women, whilst overcoming not only the stigma attached to women in sports, but a lot of opposition from the football conservatives.

The AFL has been a male dominated environment for over 150 years, and though women have always been involved, they have typically been resigned to particular roles. Jan’s main challenge is converting the mindset of some in the industry to understand that women do want to coach, umpire and play football, and not just continue in the traditional roles in kiosks or as trainers. This “self-invitation”, she says, has not been easy for some to get their heads around.

The Western Bulldogs, in partnership with the Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) and the Maribyrnong Refugee Week Organising Committee will hold the 4th Annual Inter-AMES (Adult Multicultural Education Services) Football Carnival at the iconic Whitten Oval tomorrow.

Held in Refugee Week each year, this unique Carnival uses the power of Aussie Rules to bring together newly arrived students from a diverse range of backgrounds to learn skills, both on and off the field.

MFB fire trucks and the SmokeBUSters display – which takes people through a house fire - will also be at the Oval to help promote fire safety messages within multicultural communities.

The Greater Western Sydney GIANTS will tomorrow welcome over 120 newly arrived migrants and refugees participating in the Intensive English Centres Cup (IEC) to Blacktown Olympic Park in Sydney.

GWS GIANTS Senior Assistant coach Mark Williams, along with a number of GIANTS players, will meet with the participating boys and girls who have recently moved to Australia and have been taking part in IEC programs across Western Sydney.



The IEC Cup, which coincides with National Refugee Week, is run by the AFL for newly arrived migrant students, providing them with an opportunity to experience a different sport as they make friends and settle into their new home.

The students come from a variety of different countries including Afghanistan, China, Vietnam, Korea, Sudan, Ghana, Thailand and many others.



The Foxtel Cup Round 2 has thrown up the first real surprise of the tournament so far.  Although North Ballarat was knocked out in Round 1, it was expected that fellow VFL clubs Williamstown and the Northern Bullants would win through over their SANFL and WAFL counterparts, given the Croweaters (SA) put up their weaker clubs and the WA league is generally accepted as a bit lower in standard.  But although Williamstown honoured their part, the Bullants suffered an unexpected loss.

The SANFL has paid a high price in the credibility stakes by allowing its lower ranked 2010 clubs to represent it against the best of the other states.  West Adelaide went down to top flight Williamstown by 19 points but the Bloods were only 6th in the SANFL in 2010 and were pumped by fellow SANFL club Norwood by 54 points the week before it played the Vics, so hardly in keeping with the Foxtel concept of the nation's best state league sides.

Also through to the semis are East Perth after a narrow 6 point win over the Northern Territory Thunder, and Port Adelaide Magpies after a 16 point win over North Adelaide.  The Thunder doing so well was a credit to their development since the Top End entered a team in Queensland's league, and now the NEAFL.

It was reasonable to expect the Foxtel Cup would show us the best of the VFL > the worst of the SANFL > best of the WAFL, but the Sandgropers (WA) have managed to push two of their clubs through to the semis.  So the battle remains alive for the top three state leagues. 

 

Readers will probably have noticed the scrolling football scores across the top of our website over the last year or so. In case you were wondering, they come courtesy of The Footy Record (TFR), a site set up by Ian Hill, a good friend of worldfootynews.com and a former president of the Denmark Australian Football League.

The site focuses mainly on scores from international Aussie Rules, but it's important to note that people behind TFR do not enter most of the results themselves as the job would be too large. If a league wants to see their results up there it is their responsibility to make contact with TFR, arrange for an account and enter their own results. Some exceptions have been made, with TFR posting International Cup results and WFN putting up AFL scores to try to add attention to the feed.

Adding scores from other tournaments requires a new competition to be created and additional information to be added, so it's not something we do routinely, not even for tournaments featuring the World XVIII and South Pacific. So the message is we like scores feed but we nor TFR have the resources to update the data so it's strictly DIY.

The 2011 Women's Nationals have completed, with Victoria too strong as expected in Division One. NSW were pushed harder by ACT but took home Division Two. All the competing teams then converged on AAMI Stadium where they did a lap of honour at half time of the Adelaide versus West Coast AFL match.

 

 

Victoria won Division One

Victoria 16.5 (101) defeated Western Australia 3.1 (19)

New South Wales won Division Two

New South Wales 7.10 (52) defeated ACT 6.3 (39)

Congratulations to still undefeated Victoria and to up and coming New South Wales! And here are some pictures of the girls in action from over the whole event...

In the rugby league heartlands of Sydney’s western suburbs, a football team called the Auburn Tigers has sprung up. The Auburn Tigers are from a variety of backgrounds, mostly Lebanese, and train to a backdrop of the Gallipoli Mosque towers. Against the odds, they were extremely successful, winning the premiership in their first season. However, the guys are not the only team that trains here- encouraged by the success of the men’s team, a women’s team has also started up.

Like the guys team, the Auburn Tigers women’s team are predominantly Muslim. There are also Fijian, Bosnian, Turkish, Afghan and some white girls there too. Though some girls may be from secular backgrounds, how on earth does a girl from a traditional Lebanese or Afghan Muslim family go out on the oval tackling, kicking and engaging in all the other physical aspects of football? The answer is simple- a specially designed kit, including full length skins, knee length shorts and a headscarf which the girls’ Captain, Amna Karra-Hassan, assures doesn’t slip off during the game. They also have a strategy in case a headscarf incident does occur, to make the girl feel comfortable and able to get it back on quickly.

Because of the cultural requirements of the women’s team, they ask the men to stay away from training on Wednesdays, but the greater problem to overcome is finding a coach. Experienced female coaches are thin on the ground even in the football heartlands of Victoria, and so far the girls have been unable to find a suitable one. To overcome this, their captain has learnt some drills and tactics from the guys team to help her coach the girls, and despite some of them never having seen a game of footy on the TV before, they are enjoying the game and their skills are improving.