Jurrah stars as Demons win in Shanghai

Yeah thanks Bee, that was good for a laugh! I liked how they looked like they were playing Rugby. Clearly AFL is on the verge of breaking on to the world scene. But it is also pretty clear that soccer is on the verge of collapsing here in Australia with its paltry 10 000 crowd averages, despite the media saturation. Keep up the good work!

WFN reports that the Central Blues have won their first ever Ontario AFL premiership, before a large crowd. http://www.worldfootynews.com/article.php/20101019032813118#comments The Blues are relatively new, having been formed in 2006. Their reserves also won the Div 2 grand final. The Ontario AFL is rapidly emerging as one of the very best aussie rules leagues outside of Australia, with a 10 team comp playing a regular season, and a five team reserves competition.

at Matt S China has only just started playing the game ... It`s funny all I can do is smell fear from anti Afl people... What's wrong with trying to expose a new sport in other countries ...they all know about rugby soccer basebaseball swimming basketball etc....oh well I`ll listen to guys like mister football and redbull who are clearly on this post for afl purposes...;)

That's fine. What about the comp in Shanghai?

MattS - a lot of local area's need to play the regular 9s or 12s for reasons such as isolation, regular numbers, access to fields large enough and simply that overseas especially a lot of 9s footy is played and very well organised and used for tournaments. Often the 'city' rep team at higher level regionals/nationals will be created out of the local 3 or 4 'team' 9s competition. Not everywhere can do like Toronto and run a 10 team 13 or 14 round H&A season plus finals plus Div 2. Whilst you may not rate the 9s that highly, consider that for a number of years, the peak European tournament (outside of the odd full side 'internationals') was the Euro 9s tournament. This year, for the first time, with a European Umbrella body overseeing, a full side (well, 16 aside) full tournament was played. Meanwhile, just recently the Euro 9s continued and serves a great pathway for the 'younger' nations to get competitive experience. So, no getting carried away - however, the 'baby steps' have been seen to be capable of leading to walking elsewhere - so, without getting the horse before the cart, there is at least a blue print and optimism.

Coming back to this, yes, you are right of course, that all codes will share these features to various degrees, as one example, there is great pressure on the rugby codes and soccer for players to "hold the line", as it's pretty obvious if you are the culprit that lets the team down (and allows the opposition to score). The modern form of Australian Football has that to a limited degree, but otherwise, it's a wide, open game played on wide, open spaces where players have a wide discretion to do whatever the hell they want (in terms of the geography they wish to cover). Mind you - that appeals to some, while others prefer the discipline of the other codes. Fair enough - I understand that only too well. Furthermore there are many options with and without the ball, the possibilities to contribute to the team are endless. A minimum of 2,000 individual statistics are collected every game, and many more are possible in terms of futher dissections of those. We have invented the expressions one-percenters and sacrificial acts for the array of little contributions individuals can make to the team effort, mostly without the ball. This is why many underestimate the capacity of Hayne and Folau to contribute to the team effort - they are capable of doing that, initially it will be limtied, it will grow over the years if they stick with it, but there a wide variety of things they can do immediately, because the game allows for a very wide contribution from the 22 players. We have a big emphasis on hunting in packs, backing up, supporting each other to win the ball, protect the player with the ball, and gut running to present, share it, keep it. In fact, much of our training involves an emphasis on backing up - absolutely every training routine has an element of backing up - its engrained into us over, and over, and over. The rugbies may do the same, perhpas in a different way, I don't know, but I never came across the concept in my soccer playing says (and I played to a good amateur level). These possibilities appeal to some, not all, but sufficient numbers, and all we can do is give as many people as possible a taste of it, both here and anywhere else where a Sherrin can be bounced.

BK - As the Man in Black said to Mandy Patinkin's Spaniard in "Princess Bride" - "Get used to disappointment". regarding links and the like - - just be careful about taking agenda driven opinion pieces at face value. Check timelines, an 1870 occurrence in the UK hardly invalidates stuff in Melbourne from 11 years earlier. I'd recommend you check out the NLA, National Library archive, they have the newspapers such as the SMH and Melb Argus right back into the early 1800s. For the heck of it I did a search on 'Rugby', across the 1850s and effectively nothing, a couple of Tom Brown's Schooldays book reviews, and selling of footballs from Gilbert of Rugby. And comparisons of peoples endeavour to football at Eton or Rugby. Whilst on the topic, and article about a game in 1860, Melbourne vs Richmond, lamenting the 'gentle' nature of the game and using the 'Black eyes don't look so good on Collins st" line in acknowledging that the removal of the hacking and tripping was more appropriate for adults especially where juniors might be playing the same game - - however, the author lamented the awful shapped ball, a Rugby oval ball - claiming that 9 of every 10 kicks would not go where intended, especially if subject to wind. What is clear via the article is that for the participants whose English football experience was solely school based - - that the 'new game' by M.F.C. rules was distinctly and clearly different to what they knew as 'football' (which varied of course from English school to school). This particular author obviously was not an old Rugbean. Perhaps perspective of history was based on ..... individual perspective? It indicates that in those early days - - nothing was a given. The shape of the ball initially was more relative to what balls were available. Whether spherical or oval. Until a local industry was in place for production, then, it (football) was reliant upon imports. For example, the publican Jerry Bryant was very important early on, as, he had in his possession a ball!!!! But, I recommend that you check out the NLA website, it you can do some research of your own, and perhaps edit some of the prone to fault electronic translation of the scanned newsprint. Have fun. Make up your own mind. Please trust me though - those links you provided are biased and the proofs are either faulty or feeble in the main.

Cheerleaders in Buhrkaz ooh yeah thats got my blood pumping.

One could get carried away with all this AFL development. But reality comes back to earth when Beijing has a 3 team 9-a-side comp.

Hmm... Didn't think of that. You could be onto something there! ;)

does 'metro' have a double meaning?

Plenty of sports offer that. That's not the selling point mate. What is the selling point? Maybe if you're too meek to play one of the Rugby codes, but think soccer is too soft, give Aussie Rules a go? It's a valid selling point... Pretty much the point they use to sell the game in metro NSW isn't it?

The Santiago Saints have passed an important milestone, they now have more Chileans in their team than ex-pat Australians. Go Los Santos!! Source: WFN.

Because I am frustrated that some of my posts simply don't appear.

Who am I supposed believe Kermit is a frog? Do I take your word for it or their word? I was genuinely trying to understand these links on Planet Rugby. Have you any links I can read?

Kermit I won't add to the long string above, but I well done for adding some much needed perspective. With this re-writing of history by rugby people, it's a classic case of having your cake and eating it too: 1. they want to be able to say that the game is only played in Australia; BUT 2. they also want to claim that the game is not uniquely Australian. The other ulterior motive is that some want to elevate League to the same standing as Australian Football in terms of Australian history. Unfortunately for them, we have a stack of historical documents going back to 1858, most of which is preserved to this day - and all the claims they make are invariably at odds with the historical documents we have, including eye witness accounts of the day.

BrissieKid Please illustrate the 'English Football' that you claim was copied? So far your provided links are a tad bit feeble, tending to straw-clutching and completely biased. However, you protest rather vigorously, why?

Even sjoelbak?

IN other words, you really don't understand the significance of that rule. Thank you for confirming all.

God, some of you people will believe any old crap. They have clubs for practicaly every sport in Japan. Big friggin deal.