Former UNF basketball Matt Sauey was one of the 26 athletes to take part in the AFL's US combine last week. In the video below he talks about his experience at the combine. 21 years old, Sauey at 6'7" and 92kg also played soccer in high school.

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In a rapid three days the AFL Combine in Los Angeles for 26 American athletes has been completed. The AFL were impressed with the quality of the athletes from basketball and gridiron football recruited to the Combine by a network of agents and the USAFL.

Initially the plan was for two athletes to be invited to the National Draft Combine in Melbourne in October, but the quality of results in testing has seen the number increased to three. The full results are yet to come out but it has been revealed that six athletes clearly exceeded Nic Natanui's AFL Combine record for the vertical jump of 78cm and the a similar number of athletes tested at the elite level across the board. Derrel Acrey, jumped 90cm.

Emmanuel Moody 85cm, Cliff Ederaine 82cm, Scottie Farrington 82cm, Spencer Perrin 81cm and Quinn Porter 81cm also surpassed Naitanui's leap.   Acrey, Porter and Moody are the only athletes at the combine under 190cm.

So like Tadhg Kennelly says in the video below we can't wait to see all the results.

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Collingwood Football Club today announced that they have delisted Shae McNamara. The American has been at the club for three years and despite many good VFL games for the club he was unable to crack the senior list. McNamara also played in NAB Cup matches for the club in 2011 and 2012.

Ironically his delisting comes as the AFL are running a Combine in Los Angeles to assess US athletes for potential transition to Australian football. McNamara was used in the video to promote the Combine as an athlete who had transitioned from college basketball.

His own entrance to the game however famously came after he sent video footage of himself to AFL clubs and attracted Collingwood’s attention. He had previously been playing basketball in Germany.

AFL International Development Manager Tony Woods spoke to SEN Radio's Kevin Bartlett last week about the camp that starts today (US time) in Los Angeles.  Audio below:

The USAFL today released the names of the 26 athletes that will take part in the inaugural Australian Football US Combine.

The Combine will test 21 student athletes with basketball backgrounds, four with football backgrounds and one USAFL player Tyler Mounce from the Orange County Bombers.

The Combine will be held in Redondo Beach, Los Angeles over the next three days from Monday the 27th of August. The pilot program will mirror the Australian Football League’s (AFL) Combine testing. Similar to the NFL Combine, AFL Combine testing includes standing and vertical jumps, sprinting, agility and endurance.

Attending from the AFL will be Tony Woods, Tadhg Kennelly, Mick Ablett, James Hepner and Amy Hattam.   Attending from the USAFL will be Doren James (Operations Manager), Andy Vanica (President), Matt Bishop (Revolution Head Coach) and Dan Sarbacker  (Development Team Head Coach).  Sports clothing and accessories company Under Armour will be providing the testing gear for the athletes.

The full list of athletes is as follows:

Thanks to Alex Benjamin of USAFL Webcast for his full recap of the 49th Parallel Cup from his Blog site.  Alex can also be seen weekly on his Justin.tv channel Friday evenings from Smyrna, Tennessee (Saturday mornings Melbourne, Australia time).

2012 marked the return of the Parallel Cup after no contest last year because of the International Cup.  This was the first time that the Parallel Cup has visited the city of Dublin, Ohio..

The site of the Parallel Cup was the beautiful Darree Fields, in which the main field that all four games would be played was the best field condition in any competition this year, albeit with the grass just a bit high.

While in the past Parallel Cup carried on in relative obscurity, with most of the attention focussing on  the US Nationals, this year as for the first time in its history it was being broadcast live on two platforms.  Video was shown on a fixed camera on Justin.tv through the USAFL Weekly Channel and via audio by Brian Reiss and Lee W. Mowen on OhioSportsRadioNetwork (OSRN).

"One has to wonder if the "banana" will make an appearance" were the words of WFN writer Chris Adams in 2007. While the former Australian Football League punters (or VAFA in Matt McBriar's case) weren't the first ever to try drop punts in the NFL they have certainly been credited for it's wider use in the American game.  Feted for it's greater accuracy in directional kicking and the way the ball reacts when it hits the turf (as opposed to the traditional spiral punt) the drop punt is being used by both the Australian and many of the US NFL punters.

But now it appears the banana kick could be the next Aussie rules export.  Sav Rocca tried one in the Washington Redskins preseason game against Buffalo last week.  The Washington Times described it as "a sideways-end-over-end punt designed to roll forward and diagonally toward the sideline."

Brent "Boomer" Harvey and the North Melbourne Football Club recently hosted American wrestler TNA Impact's A.J Styles. Styles joined in some contact drills and shared some wrestling techniques.

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Last time the US and Canada met it was at the International Cup in the opening round in Sydney under a reduced match length format. The US won by just three points. Two years ago the US travelled to Canada and won by thirty four points. So given their history the Americans were strong favourites for this years clash on home soil for the 49th Parallel Cup.

The match was played in hot humid conditions in Dublin, Ohio.  While the Americans perhaps did dominate the match and with some straight kicking might have run away with it, the Northwind were right in the match well into the last quarter. The final score USA Revolution 7.12 (54) defeated Canada Northwind 5.1 (31).

USA Freedom have overcome their biggest rivals, the Canadian Northern Lights to win the 49th Parallel Cup 6.7(43) to 5.8(38). After having been narrowly defeated at their last major international meeting in Australia for the International Cup, this year the Americans were out to prove something and played strongly throughout the match.

The Canadians came back several times in what proved to be a very close and low scoring game, hard fought out in midfield, and by the end of the third quarter, things weren’t looking good for the Americans as the Canadians started edging ahead. But the talented Freedom players pushed hard in the final quarter to turn the game around, and after three consecutive goals from Eileen Geogheegan and Lindsay Kastanek, they sealed victory for the USA Freedom.