Australian football is turning 150 and Australia Post is celebrating by issuing a single 50 cent commemorative stamp that features the earliest known engraving of a game of Australian football.

The engraving, entitled “Winter in Australia: Football in the Richmond Paddock” by Robert Bruce, depicts a game at Richmond Paddock, the parklands that today sit adjacent to the MCG. This image was first reproduced in the Illustrated Melbourne Post on 27 July 1866.

While the teams featured in the image are unknown, it depicts football as it was played in those early days, from 1858 until the mid-1860s. During this time, the game was played on rectangular fields and sometimes with a round ball, as shown in the engraving.

The playing area at Richmond Paddock changed proportion and size between 1858 and the mid 1960s, finally becoming an oval in the 1880s.

The outside chance of Tasmania being granted an AFL licence looks likelier with the bid announcing a $4 million, three-year sponsorship deal.

The announcement comes as the Gold Coast (GC17) and Western Sydney syndicates have yet to announce a major sponsor for their bids and while at least two Melbourne based AFL clubs, the Western Bulldogs and Richmond Tigers are still without a sponsor for 2009.

The AFL's 150 website continues to chart the history of the game. A recent table lists the premiership winners in the stronger leagues, starting from right back in 1877 when South Adelaide won the inaugural SAFA (now the SANFL) title and Carlton the inaugural VFA (now the VFL) title. Other leagues shown include the AFL (and its forerunner the VFL, starting with Essendon in 1897 as it split from the then VFA), and various winners in Tasmania starting with "Cricketers" in 1880, Rovers in WA in 1885 (followed by a Fremantle side in 1886). New South Wales entries begin with East Sydney in 1903, Queensland lists "Norths, Souths, Wests" in 1904, the Northern Territory has Wanderers in 1917, and finally Acton in 1924 is the first winning club listed for the Australian Capital Territory (Canberra).

The full list is here.

Over the years readers of worldfootynews.com will have been left in doubt that this author is particularly keen to see the game of Australian football seen in its full perspective, not as the dominant sport in one state of one country, but a game that within a handful of years of being codified had spread around a nation. And now, given the chance to go beyond those shores, it is being steadily embraced in many countries by sporting men and women who love the freedom to run, jump, tackle and kick, all in the one game.

Any of us who've had a go at learning Chinese might have come across the very popular ChinesePod, a regular Podcast featuring lessons in spoken Mandarin with subscribers the world over.

ChinesePod featured a lesson this week on Aussie Rules (or more specifically on a conversation between two Chinese watching a Collingwood game on TV, one of whom likes the game more than the other), available here.

Although the lesson doesn't have a whole lot of specific footy-related vocab, it brings up a bit of a translation question regarding how to say "footy" in Chinese, the folks at CPod called it "Australian-style Olive Ball", whereas the Beijing Bombers and Shanghai Tigers use the translation "Australian-style Foot Ball".

That probably looks a bit bizarre to English-speaking readers, but the explanation is that in Chinese, the word "Olive Ball" refers to rugby, or by extension to anything else with an olive-shaped ball, including American football. Chinese tends to name sports this way, with Badminton called "Feather Ball", Tennis called "Net Ball" and Baseball called "Stick Ball" (which makes you wonder what they call the completely different sports "netball" or "stickball").

This question comes up time to time... In at least a couple of other places around the world there were long discussions on what to call the game in the local language that didn't sound like a league of Australians playing Soccer, not to mention the confusion created if you try to translate the word "rules" into the name.

The good folks of the BJ Bombers and Shanghai Tigers have both been on the CPod message board to set the record straight. Bring on IC08, and the Red Demons can decide for themselves what to call it!

The recent debate on the relationship between the international and the national in Australian Football has several scenarios which might encourage fear in Australia.

This 100 Year Plan (below) which I wrote first in the late 1990s and has appeared on various sites and is now slightly revised: (1) shows those fears are groundless and more importantly (2) shows how far internationalisation has come – most of the first 8 points have already been achieved (see also the World Footy News Timeline).

Here I present the revised version.

Ranga Ediriwickrama, Geelong's NSW Scholarship Program signing, has made headlines in Sri Lanka, the country his parents migrated from. Both the Daily Mirror and Daily News featured a story on Ediriwickrama, who was named in this year's Under 18 All-Australian Team. The New South Welshman is expected to be drafted this year, with the Cats given first preference.

You can read about his football journey to date in Sri Lankan Aussie signs with Geelong.

Leader News has published a story which profiles young Sudanese ruckman Luak Bol, one of a number of other multicultural players in the new Murrumbeena Colts in Melbourne's Southern Football League Under 18s league.

A copy of the article, "A club for all nations", can also be found on the Leader's website.

Australia consistently ranks in the top four medal winning nations in the Olympics, something proudly celebrated by most Aussies. But has the time come for Australia to willingly accept a slide down the Olympic ladder? I think the answer should be yes. And it's intimately related to the health of Australians and the untapped potential of Australian Football.

Widely adored Sesame Street character Elmo recently met his match - the one AFL player who seems to be happier than the energetic little red... whatever Elmo is.

It's not often the AFL crosses paths with such a truly global megastar - check out Elmo and the ever-smiling Western Bulldogs' Brad Johnson on the AFL Bigpond site (for those that don't struggle with Bigpond; certainly Internet Explorer is recommended for the site).

Elmo meets Brad Johnson