The USAFL National Championships tournament is back this weekend in Austin, Texas (October 15-17) at the Onion Creek Soccer Fields.after the 2020 nationals in California had to be cancelled due to Covid.

Almost all footy in 2020 and a good deal of 2021 could not take place across the US. But in recent months footy has resumed in most cities. But the shadow of Covid still hangs over the Nationals. Not all the usual teams have been an able to field a side this year in Austin. Medical facilities in Texas are still being overwhelmed by Covid cases and this has lead to the concern that the possibility of not being able to get medical treatment should players be seriously injured. All attendees must be vaccinated against COVID-19 or a negative PCR test.

Add to this the stance of the Texas state  bringing in deploarable new laws surrounding abortions and those involved with the abortions has seen a number of womens teams and others individuals in solidarity boycotting this year's event.

In total there will be 28 mens (4 divisions) and five women's teams competing, but this includes a number of teams combined from cities without the numbers to make a full squad on their own.

Due to a lot of targeted work over a number of years AFL Canada Australian Football is now an official Canadian sport.

After a lengthy application and verification process, AFL Canada has been approved as a Registered Canadian Amateur Athletics Association (RCAAA). This is a milestone in Australian Football in Canada and brings with it many benefits not just prestige.

In the second series of interviews with people and personalities involved in Australian Football across the United States, Rick Shaibani from the Los Angeles Dragons shares his unique journey. Rick is already widely known to World Footy News readers as one of our writing team, but his journey to discover and then tell of our game adds another dimension, different again to those we have already interviewed.

The first question was to find his earliest connections to our game.

“I first discovered the wonderful world of Aussie rules when I lived in Phoenix, Arizona shortly after graduating from university in 2015. I didn't really enjoy my time in Phoenix, but I did meet some cool people, mostly through a local rugby union club that I joined. I had briefly played some union in college thanks to the influence of my dad, who played quite a bit himself growing up. Unfortunately, I never had a ton of time to dedicate to it, plus the side that I joined in Phoenix was already pretty experienced and didn't have a ton of room for newcomers to crack the starting line-up.”

After two AFLW seasons where she played 11 games, Dani Marshall has been informed she will not be offered a contract next season at the Western Bulldogs.  The long kicking American has a proven goal kicking ability up forward, but has had to spend much of her time in the AFLW as a backup ruck, mostly off the bench.

“We thank Dani for her dedication and contributions to the Club over the past two seasons“  Bulldogs’ General Manager of Women’s Football Debbie Lee said.  “Dani was the first American AFLW player in the league which was ground-breaking.

 Marshall 29, has a good leap, but at 168cm she would be one of the shortest required regularly to take the ruck duties and this has given her little opportunity to lock down a position. 

Whether as a commentator, player, fan, media maestro for the USAFL or any of a myriad of roles within Australian Football, Brian Barrish is a well-respected voice of the game. His views of all aspects of footy are informed, but more than that they are firmly aimed at the growth of the game across the United States of America. In this article, Brian reflects on his own introduction to the game and looks at the growth of the game, with particular interest in women’s footy, the ravages and impacts of COVID-19 and much more.

And now, I’ll hand the microphone over to Brian.

I was born and raised in Philadelphia and currently live in the suburbs with my wife, daughter, and assorted pets. I grew up in a sports-loving family (aside from mom, who likes sports but not at the same level as my dad, my brother and I). We watched a lot of baseball and hockey as kids, but growing up in Philadelphia, you got behind all four (at the time) major sports teams, so that's what I did. I was fortunate to grow up in a city with a number of legendary play-by-play announcers, such as Gene Hart, Mike Emrick, Harry Kalas, and Merrill Reese, and all of that enthusiasm and greatness led me to want to be a commentator when I grew up. I spent many a day commentating on my Nintendo and Sega games as practice. Out of high school, I went to university majoring in broadcast journalism, but ended up switching schools and majors and would eventually go into information technology.

Donnie Hess is already well known to American audiences for AFL social media outlets. His YouTube clips, podcasts, tweets and myriad other promotions of our game have helped enormously to propel the game of Australian football further and wider across the USA. 

In the second of a series of interviews with Australian football lovers across the USA, I threw some questions to Donnie about his own journey to the game, where the game sits now in his country and some ideas about the future. We haven’t spoken heavily about his beloved Sydney Swans, but rest assured, he will talk about them until he is blue in the face if you get him started.

Over the past twelve months, as the world has come to grips with the ravages of COVID-19 and its fallout, Australian Rules Football has had its own journey. Whilst on the home front, footy continued at the highest level (though not really at more grassroots levels), a different story played out elsewhere.

In the United States, local sport ground to a halt. Most people rode the situation patiently waiting for their beloved sports to return to playing fields or cable TV. But many stumbled across Aussie Rules with Foxtel matches live and through replays capturing a whole new breed of fan.

Among those is Rosanna. From a life where our game did not have a place in her life, she now has her own podcasts and social media platforms under the banner of AFL Obsessed where she discusses the game with anyone wanting a chat, and also supports her beloved Essendon Bombers to anyone who will listen - I do! But how is is that a young woman in New York City can become so fixated with our game in a relatively short period of time?

Here is my interview with Rosanna explaining just that.

The Australian Football world on both sides of the Pacific Ocean is in mourning at the news that former New York Magpie, Alex Aurrichio, has been killed in a car accident near Darwin. Aurrichio stands as one of the earlier pioneers of the wave of Americans coming to Australia over the past decade to pursue Aussie Rules careers.

The 198cm giant ruckman was involved in a cycling collision with a car neat Howard Springs, to the east of Darwin. The thirty-year old left his native New York in 2015 to chase his dream of making it in the AFL.

Lured to the game whilst playing for the New York Magpies, Aurrichio decided to throw the dice and try his luck in Australia. The Carlton Football Club had been impressed enough to sign the athletic and huge framed ruckman – the club at the time stating that they saw no novelty value in signing the American as his body could already stand up to the biggest bodies in the VFL/AFL system. He worked tirelessly on his skills to improve his chances.

Ahead of the 2019 AFL Draft, the son of club champion Dustin Fletcher was being touted as a chance to be drafted by Essendon. Having been closely watched by the club since his childhood, and particularly during his time at the Calder Cannons, Mason Fletcher was seen as a walk up draft selection under the Father-Son criteria.

After siting out the 2018 AFL draft due to injuries, it was anticipated that Fletcher would follow his decorated father and grand-father by joining the Bombers. However, he turned his back on the AFL before the 2019 draft to work with ProKick and set up a college pathway as a punter in the USA’s NFL.

Whilst Fletcher has not yet reached the NFL, his chances are greatly enhanced by gaining a college scholarship. Fletcher announced last week that he was "over the moon to announce I have accepted a full scholarship to study and play football for the University of Cincinnati."

In spite of the hard times going on around them, the Houston Lonestars from Texas have put together their own video clip showing club members staying in touch with the footy and each other as they negotiate COVID-19. Not only does the clip feature some unexpected footage from The Cattery down at Geelong, keep your eyes open for a "Cat Cameo".

Well done Houston Lonestars and thank you on behalf of the entire footy community worldwide.

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