More photos of the AFL IC11 Men's Division 1 grand final at the MCG, thanks to Troy Thompson and John Corrigan.  And many more in our photo gallery.

Congratulations to Derryn (from Australia) for winning our IC11 tipping competition.  Withstanding the pressure of leading from start, he stayed 2 matches clear to score a superb 58 from 66 games (88%).  He wins a Burley Premier football recommended retail price AUD$109.95.

Runner up was Seth (from USA), with 56.  He wins a Burley Match football RRP AUD$39.95.

worldfootynews.com will contact you both shortly to send you your prizes.

To split any ties we required margins be tipped for each game of the final round, the aggregate being used to split ties.  The worst results were awarded to anyone not supplying margins (as with all tipping competitions, we had a few drop out along the way, possibly as Derryn pulled clear).

Thanks to everyone who competed, we hope it brought a little extra fun to the tournament.  Special thanks to John Hamilton for running this competition for us and to our great supporters Burley-Sekem.

Final tallies below, with margin aggregates in brackets.  Players marked with * are WFN staff and were ineligible for the prizes (not that we finished top two anyway).
 

The Great Britain Bulldogs share their moniker with one of Melbourne’s AFL clubs, the Western Bulldogs. And in the spirit of football, the Western Bulldogs invited the British Bulldogs to their training ground in Footscray.

Though the official name of the training ground is Whitten Oval, named after legendary Bulldogs player and coach Ted Whitten Sr, the fans call it “The Pound”. And the British Bulldogs got to spend the afternoon in Doggie heaven on a guided tour of the grounds and the facilities of their famous namesakes.
 

As is becoming a tradition, the World Team was announced at the 2011 AFL International Cup Gala Dinner on Friday night.  This time there were squads to announce - both men's and women's.

For the men PNG had 4 players selected, four teams had 3 representatives (Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and the USA), while Fiji, Tonga, Canada, Nauru, Denmark, Japan, Great Britain and Sweden all had one player picked in the 24 man (18 + 6 interchange) line up.  An odd omission (perhaps based on limited number of games) was Fiji's star Dylan Wolfgramm.  Michael Finn (Ireland) was named captain.

For the inaugural women's World Team Ireland lead the way with 8, the USA came nexy with 6, Canada had 5, PNG 3 and Australia Indigenous Multicultural 2.  Judith Stein (USA) leads the side.

Below are both teams.

Canada came into IC11 seeded 6th, whilst Tonga were making their debuts rated 12th.  For the North Americans the tournament must surely have beeb rated as disappointing to that point, whereas for Tonga every win has been a bonus.  So in some respects the islanders had nothing in the 9th versus 10th playoff while the Northwind needed a win to restore some pride.

The match started at a fast past in the 1030am slot at Ransford Oval, Royal Park.  The bodies went in hard from both sides but it was Canada who struck first, with a ball kicked into space on the Eastern wing.  Frank Lussier (#33) ran onto the ball and carried it down field, cleverly baulking an oncoming defender and passing to 2008 World Team player Scott Fleming (#1).  From near the boundary 45m out Fleming kicked truly, not the first time his elegant kicking technique has been on display in international company.

 

In increasingly warm conditions with bright sunshine warming the expanses of the Western Oval at Royal Park, the Swedish Elks lined up against the Japan Samurais for the 11th place play off.  Japan only just scraped into Division 1 and have struggled overall, so it may have been expected that Sweden would win comfortably.  Not so.

In a tightly contested first quarter, the Elks were wasteful with 4 behinds to the Samurai’s 1.1 (7).  The sole goal for the quarter to Japan’s Ikeda (#32).

The second term saw the action heat up and the game open up.  The Swedes snaring an early goal to Rickard Barrefelt (#18) to take the lead.  Japan fired back, firstly a boundary throw in clearance saw the ball in the hands of Raku Shimokawa (#21) who kicked truly across his body for a nice goal.  Minutes later, again, Japan clearing to space and looking dangerous were able to find Takaaki Seto (#23) in the clear for another long snap on goal.  Not to be outdone, some strong marking in a passage of play by the Elks found Barrefelt again on the end, and with a strong mark he duly went back and kicked the much needed goal to stay in touch.

Usually reserved for the AFL AIS academy and Australian potential draftees, the AFL decided to run an AFL Combine for the International Cup for the first time. Each team was allowed to enter a single entrant for the Combine. AFL Combines test a number of general skills, such as speed, agility and jumping ability, as well as more football orientated skills such as handballing and kicking.

After starting with a warm up, the participants first tested their sprint speed over 20m, first registering their wristbands before sprinting through four sensor gates, 5m apart. Each participant got to do each test twice. In this test, the male and female participants showed a clear difference. The fastest men were able to do this in under 3 seconds, whilst the fastest females were 3.5 seconds.

The play off for 15th and 16th between the Peres Peace Team and India sides kicked off proceedings on the McAlister Oval at Royal Park in Melbourne.  Perfect conditions for footy, not a breath of wind and patchy cloud holding the sun at bay.

The Peace Team controlled play for most of the first quarter and with goals to Belik (#3), Benvenisty (#2) and big Kamal Abu Althom (#1), the Peace team had surged to a 19 point early lead.  A couple of late chances to India went begging and at quarter time the Indian side trailed by 17.

The 2nd term saw the tempo pick up even more, with the Peace Team attacking early but unable to convert their chances.  India was generally unable to penetrate the defensive wall of the Peace side, but, finally broke through, surged forward but the snap from the busy Jay Himat (#7) went wide.  Peace rebounded well and the ball ended up in the hands of Za’arir (#12) who marked and played on slotting the goal.  Soon after Benvensity marked again for his second goal, but a late goal to India after Ahktar (#8) handballed to Himat.

It was the playoff for the wooden spoon – or more likely to avoid the wooden spoon.  The game was a good one that matched two teams that clearly were of similar abilities.  Today the winner would be China by seven points.  But the winless Timor Leste are winners just for being here, remembering there are a number of other countries that could not muster the resources to make it to this year’s competition, and the tiny Australian neighbour only not long ago achieved sovereignty from Indonesia with some difficulty.

While of similar abilities the two teams were not of similar physical builds and in the first quarter China were out to an early lead using their height advantage up forward with high kicking and marking goals to #33 (unlisted) and Xu Jian (#7) resulting from such marks in front of goal.  Timor Leste were providing a contest with Manuel Marsil Santos Da Silva (#20) leading the way on the half back line but couldn’t get the ball forward until late in the quarter when Carvalho Pereira (#10) was able to kick a running goal.
 

Two national teams making their first appearance at the International Cup, Fiji and France, made it through to the Grand Final of the smaller division 2 (effectively 13th and 14th overall), remarkably close to the consolidated predictions of the worldfootynews.com team (12th and 14th).)

Who would prevail? Both countries inevitably have some players with rugby backgrounds and that would make an impact on the character of the final.

The Fijians, who had begun training later, had advantages, including an AusAID development officer for the AFL Glen Butler assisting with their training in Suva. In fact, they all were based in Suva, except for three players elsewhere in Fiji and two playing in Australia.

The French gained strength from three Australian based players and French players with the Montreal Saints in Canada, even as two of their countrymen living in Sweden played for the Elks. However, players sourced from nine teams from Mt Lawley to Montreal, Strasbourg and Paris to Toulouse formed less of a unit than the Fijians.  But with great passion the French most certainly played for each other.

Ireland have come back from a 28-point deficit midway through the second term to defeat the PNG Mosquitoes by 18 points today, in a match that saw the Warriors become the first nation to win two International Cups, as well as the first nation to win the Men's and Women's International Cups in the same year.

It was PNG that threatened to take the game away early.

Ali Pinda kicked the game's first goal, after receiving a free kick for a high tackle, directly in front of goal. The Mozzies were repelling all Irish attacks, with Tiernan Carbry and Lawrie Logo holding fort in the defensive 50.

A long kick to full forward to full forward from Brendan Beno saw Susuve go up for the mark and be pushed in the back, kicking PNG's second go from the resulting free kick.