This summer, my seven year old son and myself are introducing a new concept in junior sport to Arlington, VA and the Washington DC area. We call it Saturday Morning Footy. In many ways there is nothing new at all about Saturday Morning Footy. I myself started playing Footy (aka Australian football) on Saturday mornings in 1977, thirty years ago! Of course, in 1977 I lived in Ringwood East, an outer suburb of Melbourne Australia and the program was run by my best friend's dad. The name itself comes from Arlington's very successful junior basketball program called Saturday Morning Basketball. Like Saturday Morning Basketball, Saturday Morning Footy will begin with three weeks of "clinics" to teach the skills and rules (although there will be a lot of fun games along the way), and the last two weeks will consist of "matches" between the designated teams.

The 2006 USAFL National Champions, the San Diego Lions play their first official US Footy match for 2007 this Saturday, June 16th at Doyle Park, La Jolla, California. They will be taking on a combined Arizona Hawks/Las Vegas Gamblers side. We also wonder if it's time for USFooty to introduce a new tradition.

Canada's national Australian Football team, the Northwind, are in full swing with training sessions and trial games against Canadian club and combined sides. First up this Saturday 16th June is strong Ontario AFL team the Toronto Dingos. A highlight will be when they blow across to the west for an international invitational series in Vancouver against the US Revolution and the Japan Tsunami. They'll also play the touring Australian Convicts in October in what will be a very busy year for the Canadian squad, which started early with a match against the US in Texas in January.

Northwind's 2007 schedule can be viewed on the AFL Canada website here.

The Baltimore Washington Eagles (8th in our US poll) 109 points handily defeated the North Carolina Tigers (10th) 25 points. The game was played at the Capitol Polo fields in Poolesville, MD. Poolesville lies in the hart of Maryland's horse country past the grand mansions of Potomac and DC's northeastern suburbs. While it was definitely hot, there was none of the humidity that DC is famous for.

The Kelowna Cup was a very successful day for footy in Canada held last weekend Sat June 2. The Alberta Canadians won for the second year in a row defeating the BC Canadians. The BC Footy Aussie guys defeated the Calgary Aussies convincingly. Mark Block Canada's national team head coach was there and he was impressed, we may see some fresh talent heading to the Northwind squad for their upcoming clash with the US Revolution team later this year.

As the 2007 season starts to build up some momentum in the US, we take a look at what is going on with some of the clubs in the western half of the Nation - with the Denver Bulldogs playing exhibition games, the Arizona Hawks kicking off their inter-regional season as well as getting women's footy going, and movements in US Military footy in the Middle East and California.

Australian football’s involvement in the global scene (at least seriously), has only occurred in the past two decades. We are gradually seeing more exhibition matches played on foreign soil and higher participation levels outside of Australia – the figure of around two thousand players for the United Sates is not huge, but when you consider this was only a few dozen ten years ago, it is impressive growth. Other nations like South Africa have similar levels to the US, but they are expected to skyrocket into the tens of thousands in a few years time.

We're familiar with expat-Aussies trying to convert the locals, but with all these new markets comes an interesting possibility – players learning our great game outside of Australia and outside of their own homeland. WFN sought out all the clubs in the USAFL (and managed to get responses from most of them) about whether on not they had any non-Australians and non-Americans on their list, who they were, and how they had stumbled across our great game.

A permanent home for USFooty and Australian Football in the United States may currently be under construction in the City of Lauderhill, Florida. Broward County is currently constructing a stadium with 5,000 covered seats for cricket (and football) at a cost of $30m as part of a sporting complex that will include three full size cricket (football) grounds. According to the Ft Lauderdale's Fighting Squids' Joshua Goodstein, the County plans to place goal posts on the field and is working towards hosting the 2009 USFooty Nationals. If the renderings are anything to go by this will be a beautiful world class facility that will have the ability to host major events including USFooty Nationals, AFL games and possibly the 2012 AFL International Cup (Editor: probably just speculation but you never know).

On the Friday before East vs West game, Broward County hosted a tour by USFooty officials, who by all accounts, were very impressed. The scheduled open date is mid-December 2007, and according to Goodstein, both the Broward County Parks System and USFooty continue to work together in order to bring footy events to this state of the art facility.

San Diego hold on to their #1 ranking in the first regular season Top 10 Poll. The only change between this poll and the Preseason USFooty Top 10 is that young NC Tigers dropped from 9th down to 10th, while Chicago took over the 9th ranking.

Philadelphia's Daily News ran their front page article on Saverio Rocca's attempt to become the Philadelphia Eagles punter in 2007. The front page pictured Sav holding an NFL ball and a USFooty ball. Rocca is trying to displace current punter Dirk Johnson. The Eagles are also looking for Rocca to take over holding duties, much as Ben Graham does for the New York Jets. Rocca is currently listed as 50-50 to get the spot but has done well with his hang-time clocked at 5.4 seconds which is well above the required 4.5 seconds. Rocca follows in the footsteps of Darren Bennett and Ben Graham. Mat McBriar the All-Star punter for the Dallas Cowboys is also Australian although McBriar never played in the AFL.