From International Scholarship Holder to an International Rookie at Hawthorn by the end of next season, the journey continues for NZ’s Kurt Heatherley.

He signed on an International Scholarship at the end of 2009 so the progress has been about carefully developing his football nous and skills to match his athletic capacity which saw him test extremely well at this year’s AFL Draft Camps. At 192cm, and weighing 83kg the teenager came second in the 20m sprint with a time of 2.84 seconds.

The 17-year-old will join the club in a near full-time capacity in 2013, training alongside his future Hawks teammates at Waverley while playing with the Sandringham Dragons in the TAC Cup.

Hawthorn head of coaching and development Chris Fagan described Heatherley as a “real competitor” with a great attitude. “He’ll do a full year of training with us this year, which is pretty exciting,” Fagan said. “We’ll be focussing on improving his kicking and his game sense.

So good has been his development since taking up football after being spotted by the Hawks as a 14-year-old, experts consider him a likely top 20 NAB AFL Draft pick if we was in the draft pool.

Kurt is not the only International Scholarship holder at the Hawks - fellow Kiwis Shem Tatupu and Ben Miller are also listed by the AFL club.

AFL PNG star graduate Gideon Simon will wear number 50 in 2013 at Richmond, and in early club training has made a good impression already.

Simon has progressed through the AFL PNG Coca Cola talent pathway, including the Under 16 Binatangs, the South Pacific squad and the AFL PNG Academy in Port Moresby. He was identified early and signed by Richmond as an international scholarship player a couple of years ago, and in October this year attended the AFL draft camp, along with other international scholarship players Brendan Beno (PNG - Bris) and Yoshi Harris (Nauru - GWS). It was at this time that Richmond announced that he was to be listed as a full international rookie - a path previously trod by many an Irish hopeful and a Canadian named Pyke.

The following is a press release from AFL PNG.

Across the weekend of November 9-11 the AFL PNG Coca Cola National Championships were concluded in the cities of Lae and Kimbe. In Lae, the Southern, Highlands and Northern regions gathered with age groups across Under 13, 15, 17 for boys and Under 17 for girls playing off in a series of matches leading to selection in 2013 national squads as well as competing for the Coca-Cola Shield, awarded to the best performed region both on and off the field.
The Islands region held their championships in Kimbe the following week (Nov 17-18), due mainly to transport difficulties. AFL Asia Pacific Development officer Ben Drew and AFL PNG GM Murray Bird worked with the Islands officials to hold a series of matches that allowed for the inclusion of boys and girls from the Islands region to the national squads.

The following is from the AFL PNG press release

The final match of the historic 3 test series between host Fiji Tribe and the visiting Nauru Chiefs was played on Friday evening at Albert Park in Suva. The final match saw the Chiefs re-assert their dominance with a 72 point win.

My first thoughts are that irrespective of losing in straight sets, the Fiji Tribe will have learned a tremendous amount from the series and if able to harness those learnings they will only be all the better for it with an eye towards the 2014 International Cup. These sentiments were similar to those of AFL Fiji's Lupe Wolfgramm as reported by the FijiTimes "Chiefs boot Tribes in footy:
She said the players had a better understanding of the game and would use the lessons learnt from the Test to prepare for the 2014 International Cup in Australia.
"These Test matches have built a good platform for our international matches next year," Wolfgramm said. "It has also opened opportunities to host other nations in the future."

See full match report below.

Fiji Joins World Rankings 'Club'

Fiji has become the 20th Nation to be Fully Ranked in WFN World Rankings following Game Two in the 3-Test series against Nauru.

Fiji have slipped into 11th place below Samoa with 41.00 Rating Points following the 40 point loss to Nauru in Game Two. The 11.9 (75) - 5.5 (35) score line brought about a Rating Exchange of 1.49 Points, this has pushed up Nauru's Points rating to 50.35 and a rise up the ranks to 5th Place displacing South Africa to 6th Place.

Predictions For Game Three.

If the Chiefs can hold the Tribe to another plus 40 point win in Game 3 the Points Exchange will be 0.82 Rating Points Nauru finishing the series with a rating of 51.17 Points in 5th Place, and Fiji will have 40.18 Rating Points and ranked 11th.

ONLINE RAFFLE RESULTS

1st Prize Vanuatu Holiday Package - Kathy Tscharke
2nd Prize 2 x Cartons of Tusker - Shelley Christiansen
3rd Prize Vanuatu Volcanoes Guernsey - Leslie Glen
4th Prize Signed Israel Folau GWS Guernsey - Linda Gore

Big congratulations to the winners and thank you to everyone who purchased a ticket

The second match of the historic 3 test series that sees Fiji host Nauru over 8 days was played yesterday evening at Albert Park in Suva. The FijiSun reports that the Fiji Tribe showed a much improved performance going down to the Nauru Chiefs by 40 points. The final result Nauru 75 def Fiji 35.

See full match report below.

WFN World Rankings and Game One Fiji v Nauru.

WFN's unofficial World Rankings for Nauru and Fiji after the first of the 3-Test Series in which Nauru 22.15 (147) defeated Fiji 7.5 (47) brought about a Rating Points exchange of 2.71points pushing Nauru's Rating points up to 48.86 and Fiji slipping to 42.99.

This sees no actual change in Rank, Nauru at 6th Place and Fiji highest placed Provisional Nation.

WFN World Rankings and Game Two Predictions - Fiji v Nauru.

If we assume that Fiji Tribe are able to reduce the margin (hopefully they can) but not less than 40 points (which appears to be fairly likely) in Game Two there would be a Rate Exchange of 1.49.

Nauru's Points rating will climb to 50.35 to climb above South Africa into 5th Place.

Fiji will now become a Fully Ranked Nation with 41.00 Rating Points and squeeze in between Samoa and Canada at 11th Place.

If the Tribe can really improve and reduce the margin to less than 40 points then a rate exchange of 0.99 would see Nauru with 49.86 Rating Points and Fiji at 41.50 Rating points. The nations still ranked 5th and 11th respectively.

Game Three Predictions to follow after Game Two!

The second match of the historic 3 test series that sees Fiji host Nauru over 8 days was played yesterday evening at Albert Park in Suva. The FijiSun reports that the Fiji Tribe showed a much improved performance going down to the Nauru Chiefs by 40 points. The final result Nauru 75 def Fiji 35.

A full match report of game two will follow soon.

The first match was won by Nauru by 100 points with the full match report provided by AFL Fiji below.

A last reminder of the AFL Vanuatu major raffle to help get the Under 15 Vanuatu Volcanoes squad to Suva in Fiji for the Oceania Cup in December.

The winning ticket will be drawn this Thursday, November 22nd - tickets can be purchased at $20.00 each via the Trybooking website link here.

The fabulous first prize is a Vanuatu holiday package, including flights with Air Vanuatu (from Brisbane) for 2; 5 nights accomodation at Moorings Hotel and a further 2 nights accomodation at Eratap Hotel plus an Oceanwalker Helmet Dive for 2. Total package valued at over $2700 (AUD).