20,000 South Africans to play aussie rules by 2010

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Egan
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20,000 South Africans to play aussie rules by 2010

Post by Egan »

www.realfooty.com.au

WA foes in line for South Africa clash
Digby Beacham, Perth
February 16, 2007

THE prospect of a NAB Cup clash between West Coast and Fremantle in South Africa looms large after the AFL announced an expanding alliance with the republic.

West Coast, Fremantle and Collingwood have all been assigned a province in which they will promote the game. South Africa boasts 3000 Australian football players; the figure is predicted to swell to 20,000 in three years.

AFL national talent manager Kevin Sheehan said: "I know it (NAB Cup games being played in South Africa) is being talked about at commission level, and who's to say in the forseeable future that there isn't a game of note being played in South Africa, maybe in 2008."

Dockers coach Chris Connolly said: "Fremantle wants to be the first AFL club to have a South African play for its club and we'll put our money where our mouth is. The club's looking to spend between $50,000 and $100,000 promoting the game and looking to recruit players from South Africa next season."

The prospect of the Eagles and Dockers locking horns for premiership points in South Africa is unlikely because they are bound contractually to play 22 home-and-away matches at Subiaco Oval.(You sense that the Eagles and Dockers can see big revenue from launching a marketing caimpaign in South Africa, 20,000 footballers by 2010, by 2020 with that current growth. The market will be even bigger to tap into.

However, the AFL has no qualms about pitting the West Australian foes against each other in the pre-season competition.

Fremantle has played one pre-season match in South Africa, losing in 1998 to the Brisbane Lions in Cape Town.

Subiaco and North Adelaide will play an exhibition match in Potchefstroom, 140 kilometres south-west of Johannesburg, in October.

The Eagles will be responsible for pumping resources into the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Fremantle will have the North-West Province and Collingwood the Western Cape. (The Eagles got arguably the province that is the most blingzville in South Africa)

A fourth alliance, based in and around Johannesburg, is expected to be announced soon


- At the Force game I talked to a South African (white) who is a West Coast Eagles supporter. So they already embrace the game when they come to Australia.

In regards to the Eagles, expect it to be where their Manchester United characteristics come to the surface as the Eagles look to increase its global brand image.

I would not be surprised if KwaZulu Natal becomes a hotbed for AFL in 10 years time.

Not to mention austadium's own Stadium Seagull 8)

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Post by hot_dogma »

AFL (sic), the new AIDS of South Africa?

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Post by CarlosA »

Laughable.

thats the only word to describe that article.

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Post by Saints-Premiers »

CarlosA wrote:Laughable.

thats the only word to describe that article.
The article or Egan's points?

Egs, your officially half the reason I hate West Coast lol.

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Post by CarlosA »

the Article.

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Post by Tancred »

I'm sure all those kids are ignoring the 2010 world cup and dreaming of Aussie Rules :roll:

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Post by Saints-Premiers »

Okay.

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Post by CarlosA »

Do they have 3000 players playing regulary or just 3000 who have touched a ball.

I term pipe dream comes to mind when disscussing this article.

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yob
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Post by yob »

Tancred wrote:I'm sure all those kids are ignoring the 2010 world cup and dreaming of Aussie Rules :roll:
The general theme of aussie rules development in south africa is that rugby is white, soccer is black, aussie rules is for everyone. It may not have caused a revolution in South Africa, but the concept seems to resonate with about 3,000 kids at the moment.

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Post by Egan »

I've always heard that stereotype, but watching the Rugby this morning from Pretoria and I was surprised how many Black Africans where at the Rugby.

Oh yeah, get cheerleaders for the South African games. The Bulls had the best cheerleaders I have ever seen...

Although I don't think Australian authorities would let them dance the way they did in Pretoria...with ropes etc.

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Post by CarlosA »

Egan wrote:I've always heard that stereotype, but watching the Rugby this morning from Pretoria and I was surprised how many Black Africans where at the Rugby.

Oh yeah, get cheerleaders for the South African games. The Bulls had the best cheerleaders I have ever seen...

Although I don't think Australian authorities would let them dance the way they did in Pretoria...with ropes etc.
Those girls were georgous

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Post by sandyhill »

CarlosA wrote: Those girls were georgous
Were they refugees from South Sydney?

Anyway, back to the topic, heres a relevant article which gives a couple of insights as to why some South Africans are choosing Australian Football over other codes -

Finding AFL champions out of Africa
Martin Flanagan
The Age
February 10, 2007

"You have ability. I know that, you know that, God knows that." Such language is not traditional to the Australian game. The speaker, Mtutu Hlomela, is the coach of the South African AFL team. He was speaking at quarter-time in the South African's match against the Indigenous All-Star under-16 team, a game played this week at Jabiru, deep inside Kakadu National Park.

The South Africans seem to understand intuitively and immediately the spirit of our game. They lack the precise skills of the indigenous team and the artful ways of making space, but from the outset, they played with pride and purpose. The indigenous team kicked four quick goals but that was about as far ahead as it would get for the whole of the game. The South Africans kept coming and the next day's back-page headline in the Northern Territory News read: "Tourists Have Come A Long Way In Football."

The player who took my eye was J.B. van Zyl, a slight, blond-haired 15-year-old Afrikaner who plays in the midfield. J.B., as he is known, goes to an Afrikaans school. He and his mate, Ernie Strydom, are said to be the two best athletes at their school. Ernie, who has a ton of personality and is a very intelligent young man, is a high jumper, a hurdler and the captain of the school under 16 rugby union team. J.B. is a middle distance runner, a five-eighth and the vice-captain of the school under-16 rugby team.

Rugby is enormously important to their school. Indeed, school fees can vary according to a student's ability at the game. JB.'s and Ernie's rugby coach took much the same view of them coming to Australia to play AFL as Sydney took of Adam Goodes and Michael O'Loughlin playing in the All-Stars game in Darwin. Nonetheless, the pair, who are inseparable, came. They prefer the Australian game. Ernie, who does most of the talking for them, says Australian football is "smoother" than rugby; less structured, more spontaneous. More fun.

J.B. looks as if he has been playing Australian football all his life. Most of the South Africans bear traces of soccer and rugby in their kicking actions. Not J.B. His is neat and free, his use of the ball copybook — always to space, always in front of the leading player.

At half-time, former Hawthorn coach Peter Schwab, acting as assistant coach to the South Africans, said he wanted them to work on one aspect of their game — the principle of front and square. Every time a South African player was stationary over the ball, Schwab said, he wanted his teammates to try to get to a position one or two metres off him facing the South African goal. Then, with a quick handpass, momentum could be maintained. "Who understands?" he asks. J.B. did. In the second half, Schwab gave J.B. the task of reading the opposition ruckman's taps and cutting off the supply to the midfielders. He did it. He can read the play. In the team bus, he is often holding an Australian football. He has been playing our game for less than a year.

Hlomela was anxious that I speak to black defender Steven Matshane. "He is a real footballer," he said. "He takes a footy wherever he goes — to the shop, to school." As a result, for the first time, I conducted a football interview in which the answers were given in Setswana (there are six different language groups in the South African team).

Eighteen-year-old Steven, who copped two stitches above his right eye in the game at Jabiru, said the pathway to the top in South African soccer was too cluttered. "In this game, no one is ahead of me because we are all learning." Last year, playing an AFL indigenous youth team in Cape Town, he realised he could "really play this game". Asked the best player he had seen, he replied immediately, in English: "Jonathan Brown, Brisbane Lions, No. 16."

No one was more intent watching Essendon train at Marrara Oval on Wednesday evening than Matshane. "I have now seen the standard I have to attain," he said through an interpreter. His hope was that he would be noticed by an AFL scout in last night's curtain raiser to the Essendon versus All-Stars game. Matshane wants to play in the AFL. On Thursday, the team was addressed by Kevin Sheedy, whose message was later summarised by one of the Africans as follows: "If you love a game and have dreams, your dreams can come true. His did."

The problems with expanding Australian football in South Africa are — as they say of the problems associated with crocodiles in Kakadu — "clear and present". Nonetheless, I believe the AFL has to persist with its experiment. Soccer is conquering the globe as surely as McDonald's and Coca-Cola.

David James, the former English goalkeeper, wrote an interesting article in The Guardian the other week in which he said the search for the next Wayne Rooney and the enormous sums of money now involved in soccer were helping to throttle British athletics. Kids as young as eight are being targeted by recruiters and warned off other sports.

To go to South Africa is to appreciate what a truly dynamic society it is in all manner of ways. There is also an immense pool of sporting talent waiting to be tapped. Former Swans vice-captain Mark Browning is now the AFL's Queensland talent manager. In December, he visited South Africa and reported he was clear-eyed about the difficulties but concluded that with a "consistent, well-managed and resourced program", South Africa could produce AFL players in the future.

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Post by CarlosA »

Rugby is a minority sport in SA and this little event called the 2010 Fifa World Cup will ensure Footballs dominance in Africa.

Any article relating to AFL push for international recgonition is F**King laughable load of rubbish.

The AFL ned to concentrate on Sydney or Brisbane first.

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Post by Rob »

What do you mean 'first'? They're pumping millions into Sydney and Brisbane every year. And from what I can gather, most of the investment in South Africa will be coming from 3 clubs who probably see it as a potential recruiting zone. No point pumping money into anywhere in Australia where some other club can just come by and pick up the fruits of it in the draft.

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