Canberra to host 2006 international youth tournament
- Friday, June 17 2005 @ 03:21 am ACST
- Contributed by: Rob Nisbet
- Views: 3,776
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World Footy News doesn't focus heavily on the Australian Football League because as the premier competition in Aussie Rules, it receives a great deal of coverage already - much more than all the other leagues outside of Australia put together. But we also encourage all our readers to have an interest in the game's top professional league, so here we offer a review of the season at the halfway point.
International footy is still searching for its first home-grown recruit to make it to the AFL, the undisputed premier Aussie Rules league in the world. We're also yet to see such a footballer make it to the second best league in the world. But what is that league? The top three contenders would clearly be the state competitions of Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. For our international readers to understand better what sits beneath AFL level, we look at the matches which see the best non-AFL players from each league come together to play traditional interstate footy, with one match each year, giving a 2 year cycle of matches. On the line is bragging rights for the winners to claim theirs to be the best comp outside of the AFL.
The Melbourne Age reports (note this may require an account at some point) the Brisbane Lions as having taken on Gerard Sholly, former Collingwood recruiting manager to assist with taking on a rookie from Gaelic football in Ireland.
Continuing the tradition of BARFL clubs taking to the road for pre-season warmups, three British clubs went abroad this weekend. The North London Lions headed for sunny Spain to take on the Madrid Bears, the Reading Roos landed in the deep south of the USA to take on the Atlanta Kookaburras and the West London Wildcats visited Scandinavia, taking on the Stockholm Dynamite - all three giving the locals a lesson in how footy is played.
Australian Rules Football has found it difficult to break into the Asian region. Although there are plenty of expatriate Aussies keen to spread the game, they have struggled to interest large numbers of locals, more so than in North America, Europe and Oceania. Japan and Indonesia are two possible exceptions. We look at their numbers, along with all the footy teams of Asia, in our latest in the World Footy Census 2004 series.
Plans are being made for AFL Hall of Famers John Platten, Doug Hawkins and Ron Barassi to go on a world tour in January 2006, covering Asia, Europe, North America, Africa and the Pacific Region.
While the project is still in the planning stages, the idea has been trialled as a successful fundraising venture for Australian Football in Papua New Guinea and organisers are hoping it can become a regular fixture for clubs and leagues around the world.