AFL London
Aussie Rules in London, UK

Yesterday, I visited the Surrey Sports Park in Guildford, Surrey (about 40 miles southwest of London) for the EPG sponsored AIS-AFL exhibition game. This was organised by AFL Europe led by Gerard Murphy and Ben MacCormack and I must say it looked like a well organised event (I wasn’t involved in any of the organisation so I am only surmising).

The Irish took on the GB Bulldogs in a curtain-raiser to begin with but I am unaware of the score in this game.
There was a bit of celebrity tag match which was fun – Brownlow Medalist Robert “Dipper” DiPierdomenico being his usual self and lighting up the game at various points!
The main event was the AIS Academy game against the European Legion. The AIS-AFL guys look good and if we believe the AFL in that these guys are the best young AFL players in the world (they probably are TBH!), they certainly play very well. What a difference when you grow up with the game!
The final result was AIS-AFL 16.9.105 to European Legion 2.0.12

At points, the Legion matched the flowing play of the AIS guys but unfortunately it wasn’t too often that happened. Nevertheless, it will be great experience for them playing against such a talented bunch. They should learn a lot from this experience.