Photo, Richard Wood and World Footy News.
World Footy News continues its series on footy in Asia. In an article published on its website on 9 February, Troy Thompson asks, “Is it time for Asian All Stars at International Cup?”
An excerpt is reproduced below.
We continue our series on the Asian footy future with a piece that considers how to give players a pathway to international representation even if their own nation is not yet able to field its own fully local team.
The issue of the expat dominated Asian competitions comes to my mind every International Cup, mostly due to the absence of so many countries in Asia that are not represented. Japan have for a long time been involved in footy and have both expat dominated clubs and grass roots locals clubs (mostly dominated by Uni Students that they lose once they move on to employment) and have played in all International Cups. Then along came China and India who have both been able to put together national squads at the last two international cups (with some numerical support from Chinese and Indians in Australia). East Timor were the latest to join the competition in 2011.
But how to get more of the countries in Asia where footy is played involved? The obvious answer is to grow the game in the individual countries among the nationals of those countries. Ideally build up a healthy pool of individuals, pick your national team, raise the funds and the job is done. To my mind nothing beats grass roots, self sustaining community football clubs who can produce and provide their elite players to representative football.
For a variety of reasons it is clearly not that simple.
Some clubs are happy with the expat makeup of their footy team, others have had limited success in reaching out to the locals and converting them into regular Aussie Rrules footballers. The geographical realities of some clubs mean that they have to fly internationally for away games and the costs and visa issues mean that even if they wanted to play the nationals of those countries cannot realistically play in those matches.
The introduction of the World XVIII team in the national Under 16 Championships is one way that the AFL have been able to provide a junior talent pathway for young footballers from all parts of the world. In fact last year saw the first Asian internationals Thomas Murphy from Hong Kong and Richard Wood (pictured) from Indonesia play in the team (other Australian based players of Asian parentage or background have played in the World XVIII team). We would hope in the future that we start to see many more.*
To view the rest of the article on t World Footy News website, click here.
