This year's International Cup sees two debutant sides squaring off in this Friday's Division 2 Grand Final - the high-flying German Eagles and the uncompromising Croatian Knights.

For both sides, it's been a long time in the making, with over 10 years since the beginnings of domestic footy in Croatia and around 20 years in Germany.

We take a look at the history of the two countries' footy scenes, with some of the stories featuring them on WFN over the years. In Part 1, we look back at some of the stories out of Croatia over the years.

 WFN World Rankings (Women) Post Semi-Final Round

16th August 2017

Great Britain’s loss to Ireland and Fiji’s win over the Crusaders has brought about some movement in ranks with Great Britain falling two places to 5th below Ireland and USA. Fiji has climbed over Canada Midnight Suns with their win against Crusaders.

European Crusaders become the Ninth Nation to become Fully Ranked with 33.04 Rating Points.

IC17 Round 5 matches will play out at Royal Park tomorrow. The latest scheduled match times and ovals are in the table below.

All 11 matches will also be streamed live on the AFL's International Cup Youtube page. All matches tomorrow will be seeding matches e.g. South Africa vs France will be the playoff for 9th/10th place.  Germany and Croatia will playoff for the Division 2 title in what should be a great match.

The remaining games of Round 5 are the Men's Division 1 and Women's Division Grand Finals that will be played at the MCG and Etihad Stadium on Saturday.

Papua New Guinea Flames Burn Pakistan Shaheens

Papua New Guinea and Pakistan 3rd and 4th place teams in their respective pools played an entertaining match in Semi-Final 4 of the Women’s Division of IC17 at Western Oval, Royal Park. Although the outcome of the match was very predictable as the experience of the Flames is well documented, no chance of a boil over by International Footy newcomers Pakistan was given.

Some discussion revolved around whether the Shaheens could finally register a score in this match. I watched their match against Canada last week and was hoping to see some improvement from the girls and wished to see them keep the Flames score to less than 20 goals.

Division 2: Indonesia Garudas v India Bombers

As 3rd place and 4th place getters of their respective pools Indonesia and India played the Semi-final 3. match at Western Oval, 16th August. Indonesia went into this match as warm favourites on the form of their win over Sri Lanka and because India had lost to Pakistan on Saturday in round three.

Ruck contests were pretty even but Indonesia were able to gather more first use of the ball and were consistently quicker with both hands and feet and quickly moved the ball into their forward fifty and were able to score several quick goals, one each to Waruwu and Hariyanto.

We welcome Michael Blades making his match report debut for WFN.

Nauru push through to beat hard fought Canada in a thrilling game.

These polar opposite teams battled furiously throughout the whole match, with both teams having strong spells in all quarters.

At the 8:45am bounce, Canada started strong, applying early forward pressure. There was a clear height advantage in favour of the Canadians which was not capitalized upon throughout the match.

After a disappointing loss to Japan on the previous Saturday, the German Eagles were too strong and too tall for a determined China Dragons outfit at Royal Park on Tuesday, winning their Div 2 semis final and booking a spot in Friday's final against Croatia. Whilst the Dragons were quick out of the blocks and pushed hard in the first term, the Eagles pushed ahead with the breeze after the first break, setting up a lead which the Chinese were ultimately unable to reel back in, the Eagles winning by 28 points.