We’re used to high flying men but last week’s emails flying around the Asian Footy Houses about random and seeded draws, to say the least, was fairly interesting for us Swans in our first Championships year.

Pizza Dan from the Bali Geckos put up a spirited argument for introducing a seeded draw this year but was unsuccessful. His Seeding Vs Random Draws email is attached.

Rooster (now with the Singapore Wombats) who was apparently a key advocate for the introduction of the Asian Champs back in 2000, wrote an email exhorting the Asian Footy Presidents to start actively steering the footy ship to ensure we end up where we intend. As an example, he asks what should happen if the UAE win the Champs and ask to host it in the Middle East? Is that fair enough? “Maybe they should be like Heather Locklear in Melrose Place – ‘Always welcome but always a special guest star’ “.

Pizza Dan believes that footy in Asia needs to be more formalised with a Commitee of Presidents and a Chair. He first distributed a proposed league based system a year ago that would be run alongside the Champs (not replace). He’s very keen that people start to actively debate and discuss these issues. Have a look at the Proposed Asian AFL.

Also, in an earlier posting it was stated that the Asian Champs is the only truly regional competition (or “something similar” words). Well, this makes our friend, Mr Rooster think it’s 4am again. Rooster has also been involved with the Central European AFL Championships, so click on CEAFL for more. This weekend, as it happens, Rooster is off to Vienna to watch the CEAFL Grand Final.

It will come as no surprise to the Hanoi Swans to learn that the Finns are the reigning champs of this CEAFL competition. We once had the Big Finn, Antti, play with us for 6 months last year. We now know there’s more to Finland than just Santa and vodka.

In this photo, Antti the Big Finn is the big guy with blonde hair (Dead Cat Stadium, Hanoi).

It seems like the Vietnamese Swans have entered the Asian Champs at a very interesting stage of its development. There’s certainly no shortage of people who care about footy in Asia.