AFL goes Hollywood

[Discrim]

Hey fellas, yall ready for some (Aussie) football?

LA Next Stop for Game 

A MATCH scheduled to be played in Los Angeles early next year may become the second international game of the official 2006 pre-season competition.

The Kangaroos are pushing to play the match, tentatively booked for January 22, against the Sydney Swans at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

LA-based businessman Alan Johnson, a former North Melbourne director, will underwrite part of the venture and will meet with Roos and AFL officials during the next week.

Johnson, who runs the Ramada Plaza Hotel in West Hollywood, wants the game to be a feature of next year's Australia Week festivities in Los Angeles.

It is understood Qantas is considering official involvement in the AFL match, with other private enterprises expected to cover most of the competing clubs' costs.

Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy was impressed with the UCLA facilities when he inspected them last year. The Swans would prefer to play Essendon in the match, but Johnson says a Kangaroos-Sydney Swans match is the best-fit for the LA market.

The Kangaroos will ask the AFL to give the game official pre-season competition status.

The AFL has already provisionally scheduled an official 2006 pre-season match in Dubai, between Collingwood and Adelaide.

It will not decide whether to raise the status of the Los Angeles game from exhibition to official until next month.

Some of the project's logistics, including costs associated with broadcasting it back to Australia and the January 22 scheduling, may prove difficult to overcome.

Next year's official pre-season competition will begin in late February.

AFL football projects officer Dean Moore inspected the UCLA facilities this year.

An exhibition AFL match will be played between West Coast and Fremantle at The Oval in London in October.

7/6/2005 - Damian Barrett, Herald Sun

I hope FSN, ESPN or somebody puts this match on TV...shoot, I'll go to LA my damn self if I got to, but I need the money for other stuff ...but shoot, PLEASE televise this match!

[Alphabet Man]

yer sounds good for the game, this years game was cancelled but with QANTAS gettign involved it would go ahead, QANTAS sponsored the Aboriginal All-Stars v Bulldogs match earlier this year, but i cannot see them sponsoring the Collingwood-Adealide game in the UAE cos well the MAgpies are sponsored by Emirates Airlines....

From what i understand, if the game started at 7:30pm LA time (hoping the UCLA ground has lights) that would come back into Australia in the Arvo' ....

As for the TV broadcasting, give it to FOX in the US and get them to feed it back to Oz on the FOX Footy Channel, but we'd want our commentators though, use the FOx in US technical stuff but use our cameramen and commentators i dont know just sounds like a good idea

BTW, St Kilda looks like going to South Africa again this year for their Pre-season camp to kick-off thier pre-season

[Brian in Boston]

That's PHENOMENAL! North Melbourne is my favorite side in the AFL and I live just a short drive from the UCLA campus. I'm definitely attending that match.

[Alphabet Man]

That's PHENOMENAL! North Melbourne is my favorite side in the AFL and I live just a short drive from the UCLA campus. I'm definitely attending that match.

isn't Boston on the other side of the country? lol

well you'll be dissapointed that the Roos are down by 4 in 3mins into the 2nd quarter

[DEAD!]

That's PHENOMENAL! North Melbourne is my favorite side in the AFL and I live just a short drive from the UCLA campus. I'm definitely attending that match.

isn't Boston on the other side of the country? lol

well you'll be dissapointed that the Roos are down by 4 in 3mins into the 2nd quarter

I'm beginning to get ticked off that I let go Adam Simpson from my fantasy team

[yh]

(hoping the UCLA ground has lights)

I'm assuming the "UCLA ground" that's being discussed is the Rose Bowl - yeah, they've got lights.

I can't recall ever seeing an AFL match (exhibition, preseason or otherwise) being played in the States before. This will be great and I hope it's televised here.

[redsfan39]

no more waiting until 1 am to see some AFL.

[cyandlux]

(hoping the UCLA ground has lights)

I'm assuming the "UCLA ground" that's being discussed is the Rose Bowl - yeah, they've got lights.

I can't recall ever seeing an AFL match (exhibition, preseason or otherwise) being played in the States before. This will be great and I hope it's televised here.

I think maybe its the soccer fields on campus or else they would have said Rose Bowl, and no I dont think that has lights.

[goalieboy82]

i will go to see the roos play.

[Alphabet Man]

(hoping the UCLA ground has lights)

I'm assuming the "UCLA ground" that's being discussed is the Rose Bowl - yeah, they've got lights.

I can't recall ever seeing an AFL match (exhibition, preseason or otherwise) being played in the States before. This will be great and I hope it's televised here.

in the late 80's they had 1 in Miami i think Melbourne v geelong i think

[DEAD!]

(hoping the UCLA ground has lights)

I'm assuming the "UCLA ground" that's being discussed is the Rose Bowl - yeah, they've got lights.

I can't recall ever seeing an AFL match (exhibition, preseason or otherwise) being played in the States before. This will be great and I hope it's televised here.

in the late 80's they had 1 in Miami i think Melbourne v geelong i think

Let's see......

http://www.iafc.com.au/history/intmatch.html

[Alphabet Man]

(hoping the UCLA ground has lights)

I'm assuming the "UCLA ground" that's being discussed is the Rose Bowl - yeah, they've got lights.

I can't recall ever seeing an AFL match (exhibition, preseason or otherwise) being played in the States before. This will be great and I hope it's televised here.

in the late 80's they had 1 in Miami i think Melbourne v geelong i think

Let's see......

http://www.iafc.com.au/history/intmatch.html

there have been a few matches....anyway the IAFC are hacks.....all the IAFC is one person and a website, nothing else, and my dealings with him are not good, especailly as i write for WorldFootyNews.com who are in a war with IAFC over the news posted there

[Discrim]

there have been a few matches....anyway the IAFC are hacks.....all the IAFC is one person and a website, nothing else, and my dealings with him are not good, especailly as i write for WorldFootyNews.com who are in a war with IAFC over the news posted there

c'mon aussie, tell us how ya really feel. keepin all that emotion bottled up, i tell ya, it's gonna be the end of ya

[Alphabet Man]

there have been a few matches....anyway the IAFC are hacks.....all the IAFC is one person and a website, nothing else, and my dealings with him are not good, especailly as i write for WorldFootyNews.com who are in a war with IAFC over the news posted there

c'mon aussie, tell us how ya really feel. keepin all that emotion bottled up, i tell ya, it's gonna be the end of ya

i really think that they do nothing and try to claim he does......i and others do more promoting footy on here than they do.....he went to India to find no one.....and the pics taken at a bbq were not from India, but rather a Christmas bbq......

on last years Convicts trip to South Africa, he kept undermining my good mate at WFN, and wouldn't understand the word NO when he asked my mate for a few beers.......and a few other things that could have affected his relationship with his girlfriend.....

i cant think of more but there are more

[goalieboy82]

its on!

Sydney Swans chairman Richard Colless believes the club's pre-season trip to Los Angeles next season - where it will take on the Kangaroos in a match at the UCLA as part of Australia Week celebrations - will be of enormous benefit to the Swans both on and off the field.

The Swans will take on the Kangaroos on Sunday, January 15, in California but the match will not be part of the AFL's official pre-season competition which next year will be known as the NAB Cup.

However Colless hopes the match will become a regular event and become an important part of the Swans' pre-season build-up each year.

"We don't like to think of it as an exhibition game," Colless told afl.com.au.

"It's more of a pre-season challenge game in much the same way as American football teams play such games in Mexico and Canada and there was one in Sydney in 1999."

Colless said the game would showcase Australia's only indigenous game to one of the world's biggest cities - which would lead to enormous exposure for the game and the two clubs.

"The Australian Consul-General in LA is John Olsen, the former premier of South Australia who is a fanatical AFL person who thought this was an opportunity to have an AFL game as the centrepiece of Australia Week," Colless said.

"There will be Australian food, Australian wine, Australian fashion, Australian entertainment and unlike soccer or rugby a game of that is uniquely Australian."

Colless said he is hoping the match will also lead to "some terrific sponsorship opportunities" for the Swans.

"California is the fifth biggest economy in the world and the Greater LA economy alone is the tenth biggest and bigger than Australia's," he said.

However for all the off-field opportunities the trip presents, Colless said the Swans board would never have agreed to it unless coach Paul Roos and football manager Andrew Ireland were in support.

Colless said the players would stay for a week in Los Angeles and would spend time in Hawaii on the way home to ensure the trip was not too taxing just a month from the start of the NAB Cup but said it would definitely not be a holiday for the players.

"It will be more like an off-shore training camp," he said.

"And it will give us a chance to be exposed to some of the world's most professional sporting clubs."

This includes NFL club the San Diego Chargers as well as the numerous college football teams that are based in California.

Colless said he expected the game to attract a crowd of around 10,000 and said supporters in Australia now had the opportunity of planning a trip to Los Angeles - which is always the first port of call for those planning to holiday in North America - around the time of Swans-Kangaroos clash.

I will be there at that game!