Richmond Football Club have confirmed their young American born- Irish signing John Heslin will play for Ireland at the 2011 International Cup.  He is expected to be joined by a number of Irish expats playing footy in Australia with state league experience such as Conor Meredith who has spent previous years at the North Melbourne football club playing with their VFL affilliate Werribee.

“John’s commitments with his Gaelic team, Westmeath, are finished and he’s really looking forward to coming out to Australia again and representing Ireland in the International Cup,” said Richmond’s Recruiting Manager Francis Jackson. 

While he has never to our knowledge played Aussie rules in Ireland or anywhere else (other than a training stint at Richmond earlier in the year, and at Essendon the year before) he will be eligible under the International Cup rules to represent his country.

 

The following is for a fundraiser in Ireland.

The Irish Banshees are playing in the AFL International Cup for the first time this August. This is also the first time the AFL have included a Women’s Division in the competition! It was only last year that the Banshees wailed their success, defeating Italy at the Euro Cup- can they add another international trophy to their cabinet? OF COURSE! Can they do the Irish nation proud? OF COURSE! Can they show the world that chicks really do have balls!? OF COURSE! ... And they know how to kick them too!

The Banshees have been fundraising for the trip like mad but they are still to reach their target, so they expect to see everyone come together and support their national Irish team at a Table Quiz event on Saturday 23rd July at the Woolshed in Dublin. First Bounce 8pm sharp.

Tickets are 10 euro each and 4 to a table. 

Please contact Leiha or any of the team for tickets!

Ph: 08 5734 1096

Help support the USA Revolution and USA Freedom and buy an Offiicial Supporter's T-Shirt! All proceeds go toward helping fund the teams for 2011 International Cup. Shirts are available in men's, women's and kids sizes.

Shirts are $25 and can be posted out to USA or Australia ($5 for one T-shirt or $11 for up to six T-shirts) They can also be collected free from your local USAFL club or from the teams in Sydney and Melbourne.

Orders must be placed by July 17. To order online, click here. Payments can be made by PayPal to freedom@usafl.com, or by cheque within the USA, made out to USA Freedom, and mailed to USAFL, 1500 7th Street #6J, Sacramento, CA 95814. The T-shirts will be shipped out on August 3.

If there are any problems or questions, please contact Amy Bishop at freedom@usafl.com

Donations to USA Revolution and USA Freedom can also be made by PayPal. Click here to visit their PayPal site.

With now just a matter of weeks to the start of the 2011 fourth instalment of the AFL International Cup, the build-up begins in earnest. Our previews commence with the reigning champions.

The 2008 winners and three time finalists are Papua New Guinea. After finishing runners up to Ireland in 2002, and then to New Zealand in 2005, finally a young new generation of talent took the title in 2008, with some help from a few stalwarts. Their fleet footed players were supplemented by a few slightly taller finds that could take a mark and in a pulsating come from behind win they knocked over the Kiwis in the 2008 Grand Final at the MCG. Some of the names have become reasonably familiar to followers of international footy. Whilst providing a fitting finale to the international career of veteran Overa Gibson, the 2008 tournament also launched at senior level players such as Stanis Susuve, John James, Emas Wartova, Donald Barry and Amua Pirika.

PNG is on an upward curve that is hard to match, and many of those stars return. But the Mozzies will not quite be at full strength so back-to-back Cups may not be the formality one might expect.

In the lead up to the 2011 AFL International Cup we're getting various questions from supporters that want to see the action. We'll endeavour to answer what we can and find out what we don't know.

Answers to recent questions:

Q: When is the draw out?!
A: July 1st, i.e. it's out now! See Final IC11 draw released. Note that there have been several revisions and we endeavour to keep the latest there.

Q: Where is BISS?
A: The draw for the first round of IC11 shows BISS1 and BISS2. These are two ovals at the Blacktown International Sportspark Sydney. It's also home to the next AFL club, the GWS Giants, as well as a baseball club. See www.blacktownsportspark.com.au

Q: How do I get to BISS and what's the weather like?
A: Visit BOM for weather and here's a very brief guide to the weather and transport options to the ground: Transport and weather for Sydney start

Q: Can the public buy tickets to the IC11 Gala Function at the Crown Palladium?
A: At this stage, no. Limited tickets were sold in 2008 but this year the capacity is reduced and the number of players and officials has increased. If some space remains the AFL has said they will advise us and we will publish the details.

Additional reporting by Tobietta Rhyman and Aaron Richard.

AFL Italia Femminile have confirmed that they are not taking part in the Women’s Division of the International Cup. The Swiss men’s team also decided not to compete at IC11.

There’s always two sides to a story, and in this case maybe three. The situation with the Italian women’s side was always complicated as the AFL prefers groups to work through the local affiliated bodies such as AFL Italia and AFL Europe whereas AFL Italia Femminile appears to have worked separately to the local League and at times directly with the AFL. The Italian women were also more closely aligned with the Swiss men’s competition, although notably their jumpers did feature the AFL Italia logo, so at one time there was cross-over.

The situation between all the bodies appears to have deteriorated over a period of months, culminating with a possible communication breakdown as the Cup draw was announced. The bottom line is that sadly, despite a lot of work by AFL Femminile Italia and we believe an AFL desire to have them present, the women of Italy will not be represented at IC11.

For fans wanting to keep up to date on the Irish team vying for the ultimate prize at this year's International Cup, there is a new blog covering the Green Machine's preparations.

Peter Ross from the Irish Warriors is man behind the blog, saying "the blog will cover aspects of the preparation, fundraising, injuries etc. I hope the blog is both fun and interesting and is designed to raise awareness of Aussie Rules in Ireland and also get more attention for the International Cup in Australia."

Whilst the Irish IC squad has not yet been made public, they are expected to field a number of eligible Irish expats currently playing suburban footy in Australia and will no doubt be very tough to beat.

Peter Ross' blog can be found at irishwarriors.wordpress.com.

The Swedish Elks are the latest team to name their squad for the IC11, with players from across the country represented.

The Elks have a very strong southern and western Swedish element, with the Helsingborg Saints supplying nine members to the Elks (including captain Johan Lantz), Port Malmö following with seven, and the Gothenburg Beserkers with six representatives in the squad.

The remaining six members of the 22-man squad include four from the Stockholm local league, one from the Karlstad Eagles, and one currently playing suburban footy in Melbourne.

Coaching the squad will be Daniel McClaer, who steered the Elks to their 3rd place finish in last year's inaugural European Championships.

The iWed is a iPhone/Android app and it's walking us down the aisle to the IC2011.

Ireland's national women's footy side, the Banshees, are headed to Australia for the inaugural Women's International Cup.

Within our organisation we are lucky enough to have people with great talents on and off the field.

The president of the league Ciaran O'Hara and myself had discussed a few different fundraising options at the start of the year, he had said that previous years sponsorship had been not been as successful as he would have liked and that he wanted to do something different to give people an organic reason to fund our teams. Then he suggested the idea of providing a service to Irish businesses by creating an app. The iWed was born, acting as Ireland's only wedding app directory.

The full 2011 AFL International Cup itinerary is shown below.

It includes all the match days as well as other events including the Women's Launch Function on Monday August 15th, the International Development Forum (as per 2008), the two AFL matches which will have IC games as curtain raisers (one being the IC Grand Final), the Captains Lunch with the AFL Commission and Andrew Demetriou, and the International Cup Gala Function at the Crown Palladium in Melboune on Friday August 26th.

The Australian Football League has launched an official Facebook page for the 4th International Cup.

The page is www.facebook.com/AFLInternationalCup.

You can also get IC11 news (besides right here on WFN) at the AFL website, in particular as directed to by ic11.com.au.

And a reminder that we'd love you to join our own Facebook group at www.facebook.com/groups/5197533739.

Sports branding studio Locker Room 51, founded by long-time international footy identity and Croatian Knights stalwart Kolja Koračak, has produced a poster for fans of the 2011 International Cup to follow and record the scores from the tournament.

Pictured at left is a low-res version of the draw and score card for the Lightning Tournament/Seeding Round, with the full size version available here.

Locker Room 51 have created sports branding for a number of clubs and organisations spanning many different sports. In Australian rules football, their work is well-known around Europe and further afield, including logos for the EU and Euro Cups, European Championships, the European Legion jumper, and numerous clubs and league logos.

Ed - Sorry for this story disappearing for a few hours, we had some issues with the media gallery not letting people download the full-sized file. Seems to be working now, email us if you have any further problems downloading it.