Danish Australian Football League
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The Danish Australian Football League is the controlling body and main league for the sport of Australian rules football in Denmark. Founded in 1989, regular competition commenced in 1991. Despite being predominantly Danish, the league includes clubs in Scania (Swedish: Skåne, southern Sweden).
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[edit] Participation
With over 300 seniors and 100 juniors participating annually, DAFL is often considered the largest Australian Rules football competition outside the English speaking world.
[edit] History
In 1989 Mick Sitch placed an advertisement in a Danish newspaper asking if there were any interested parties who would like to meet him for an kick-to-kick in Fælledparken, a public park in Copenhagen. Three people attended the informal session, forming the basis for the future league. In 1990 regular training sessions were held, with numbers swelling to the point where the players split themselves into three groups with the intention of starting a competition the following year.
The foundation clubs of the league were the Amager Tigers, Copenhagen Crocodiles and North Copenhagen Barracudas. Official league play began on June 8th 1991 with North Copenhagen taking on Copenhagen. In 1993, the next team to join the league were the Aalborg Kangaroos, based in northern Jutland and around six hours' travel from Copenhagen, followed in 1994 by the Helsingborg Saints in southern Sweden.
1995 saw two new expansion sides, the Farum Lions forming in the Copenhagen suburbs and a group leaving the Helsingborg Saints to found Sweden's second team, the Lund Bulldogs. Lund folded during the 1995 season, the number of clubs remaining at six until the Århus Bombers join the league in 1997 as the second side in Jutland.
With no new teams since 1997 and player numbers decreasing for the first time, the DAFL restructured its competition in 2003. The concept was based on more games between more (and smaller) teams - with three conferences making up the league. These were to be the Jutland Conference and the Zealand Conference in Denmark and the Scania Conference in Sweden. Clubs would be split into smaller squads and representative sides from the three conferences would play a regional series. The champion sides of each conference would then play a Denmark/Scania wide finals series to determine DAFL premiers.
This format was then reinvented a second time in 2005. Instead of adding a new level above the regular league play, as had been the case in 2003, the new league replaced the regional series with the club-based DAFL Premier League. The Premier League teams are the North Copenhagen Barracudas, Farum Cats, Copenhagen Hawks, Jutland Power and the South Sweden Saints. Sides in the Premier League draw their players from four local leagues, based on North Zealand, Copenhagen, Jutland and Scania.
The current (2006) president is Mark White.
[edit] Clubs
[edit] National team
Denmark's national representative team are known as the Vikings. They have played a number of international fixtures dating back to the 1990s.
They competed in the Australian Football International Cup in Melbourne, finishing a respectable fourth behind Ireland, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand. The Vikings withdrew from the 2005 International Cup due to lack of funds, although it is expected that there will be a Danish team at the 2008 International Cup.
[edit] Premiers
- 1991 North Copenhagen
- 1992 Amager
- 1993 Amager
- 1994 Copenhagen
- 1995 Amager
- 1996 Farum
- 1997 Amager
- 1998 Copenhagen
- 1999 Copenhagen
- 2000 North Copenhagen
- 2001 North Copenhagen
- 2002 Amager
- 2003 Amager
- 2004 North Copenhagen Cudas
- 2005 Farum
[edit] Sitch Medallists (Best & Fairests)
- 1991 Kim Madsen (Amager)
- 1992 Aaron Ravenarki (Copenhagen)
- 1993 Ian Moore (North Copenhagen)
- 1994 Rick Ellis (Amager)
- 1995 Jesper Gjørup (Aalborg)
- 1996 Jesper Gjørup (Aalborg)
- 1997 Shaun Hawking (Amager)
- 1998 Mogens Hansen (North Copenhagen)
- 1999 Duncan Milward (Aalborg)
- 2000 Andreas Svensson (Helsingborg)
- 2001 Andreas Svensson (Helsingborg)
- 2002 Andreas Svensson (Helsingborg)
- 2003 Pàll Finnsson (Aalborg Kangaroos)
- 2004 Mogens Hansen (North Copenhagen Cudas)
- 2005 Frederik Schulin (Jutland)
[edit] See also
[edit] External link
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