US Footy’s Australian Advisory Board Executive Director, Tony Fairhead, recently managed to have students from Saint John’s University, Minnesota, who are studying at the University of Notre Dame, Fremantle taught a little bit about Aussie Rules, including playing games.

World Footy News proudly announces the inaugural USFooty Top 10 Poll. WFN has recruited ten of the brightest minds in USFooty to vote on their Top 10 USFooty teams and then has aggregated the votes. We plan to have six more polls during the season concluding after USFooty Nationals on October 13-14. WFN will announce the winner of the USFooty Poll Premiership on October 1. The honor will go to the team voted Number 1 based on its 2007 regular season games.

USFooty has announced that Hawthorn Premiership player and former Head Coach, Peter Schwab, will join their Australian Advisory Board. Schwab is currently the Chief Executive of Football Victoria and the Chairman of the AFL Match Review Committee. Schwab brings USFooty a lot of football knowledge, as well as respect and clout within AFL circles. USFooty recently formed the Australian Advisory Board with the objective of eventually having seven members with high profiles in footy and business in Australia.

Melbourne daily newspaper the Herald Sun reported on Sunday, 25 March that Ms. Abbe Land, mayor of California's 'busiest precinct' and Democratic senate candidate for California, will be at the MCG on Saturday.

Apparently the Roos have been adopted by Hollywood business leaders since they played the G'Day LA match in 2005 and they, like Dean Laidley, want the team to return in January.

Rumour has it that if they don't return the Socceroos will play a game there instead against an MLS side, possibly including David Beckham - although our sources tell us that the NRL wanted to do the same this year and were rejected as the AFL said they were still interested in future matches.

Discussion between touring Australian side "the Convicts", USFooty and the AFL Canada has come upon the possibility of the Convicts taking on the US Revolution on Sunday, October 14th this year as part of the 2007 USAFL National Club Championships to be held in Louisville, Kentucky. The match will follow one week after the Convicts take on the bulk of the Canadian Northwind in Toronto on Saturday October 6th, as a curtain-raiser to the Grand Final of the Ontario AFL, Canada's oldest league and one of the biggest and strongest outside Australia.

The USFooty season is fast approaching so Chris Adams has got the ball rolling with his 2007 predictions, looking at his top-ten USFooty clubs and how their preparations are going.

Ontario has proven fertile ground for expansion sides this winter and encouragingly enough, they’re all well outside the Toronto area, the hotbed of Canadian footy. There’s the Ottawa Swans in the Nation’s capital, the Cambridge Warriors in the Kitchener/Waterloo area (watch for an article on them in a few weeks) and a third side in the city of London, nicknamed the London Stallions. Home to the University of Western Ontario, the city of 335 thousand is located about 2 hour’s drive southwest of Toronto. If London sounds familiar footy-wise, that’s because a previous side, the London Magpies, went under after the 2005 season. The Pies struggled on and off the field having trouble fielding a side for their final few matches before missing the playoffs and folding.

The USAFL and the Louisville Kings Football Club today confirmed that Louisville, Kentucky will indeed be the host city for the 2007 USAFL National Championships on the weekend of October 13th and 14th, 2007. As reported earlier the rumours had been strong that this would be the case, and the claim had earlier been posted on the Louisville website before being withdrawn.

It appears that the Louisville Kings website has jumped the gun (as have I) in announcing they are hosting the 2007 US Nationals.  The club has contacted us to say that there is no definite decision on the location and that US Footy will make the announcement when the final decision is made.  They have said they are removing the announcement from their site as it was added by a team member getting “ahead of himself”. 

Rich Mann the National Championship Director also posted on the US Footy Forum today saying that nothing is yet confirmed but they were “VERY close to signing final contract with venue, fields etc” and “we should be officially announcing by end of week, but again, be aware I'm waiting on contract from city, so out of our hands to a certain extent.”

 

The Louisville Kings Footy Club website appears to be breaking the news (although rumours have strongly suggested it would be the case) that the 2007 Nationals will be held in Louisville, Kentucky (note that their website has since gone down).  This will be the 11th staging of the event, in the 10th year of the USAFL.  It will no doubt be promoted as a celebration of that milestone with a return to the original location of the first game of footy played in the US between Louisville and Cincinnati back in 1996.