Portfolio USAFL and AFL Canada

[maggotz]

Okay mates, this is Aussie rules football, North American style!

I will attempt to use this thread off and on over time as a news feed, of sorts.

One of my projects (long term) is a website like that Mero dude created, with a couple of differences. First, and most obvious, is that it would include a bunch of USAFL/AFL Canada jumpers along with some additional history (since that's pretty scattered across the internet and scribbled on pads of paper here and there across America, right now). The USAFL is now heading into its 17th year, so the longer it takes for someone to put that info together, the harder it will become. Some of the info is already rather difficult to locate. That's the same as the situation in Victoria regarding the early days of footy. Records and notations were not kept as rigidly as they are now, and as a result, much of that early history is lost until/unless someone stumbles upon it. To the extent possible, I don't want that early history to be lost here.

Second, is to mirror that footyjumpers.com site, but with differences. Mero has pointed out numerous times why he will not put sponsors on jumpers on his site. However, I believe I have a loophole for that. As you will see when I do get around to posting photos of American jumpers, many of the USAFL clubs have relationships with AFL clubs and receive hand-me-downs from them. Therefore, when I have a USAFL jumper that corresponds to an AFL jumper from an earlier year I will also post it into an Australian jumper section, complete with sponsors, if any. (My reasoning is that if it's okay to put that jumper on the American side of the website, it surely would be okay to do so on the Australian side, as well. I seriously doubt I will have any problems whatsoever with USAFL and its clubs, who now own/use some of these jumpers.) This is not a competition or a way of trying to replace footyjumpers.com. I admire Mero for his dedication to footy history. He has done an incredible amount of research to make his website a reality, and I am finding this out myself as my research continues as it has off and on for 3 or 4 years now. There is always the possibility that it would be too overwhelming and I may just scrap the Australian part of the site and focus solely on USAFL/AFL Canada, or minimize the Aussie section to basic information. Time will tell. But, if there are (and for as long as there are) Australian jumper pages, there will be links to corresponding pages on footyjumpers.com also.

Now, having said all that, I have nothing along those lines that I am ready to share just yet.

But, I do have a 30 second promo video that I made for the USAFL. Not certain if they will use it or not, but if so, there's a chance it will air nationally here during the AFL Grand Final. I will soon have a sort of "highlight reel" that I may post/link here also when it is completed, and I will be focusing on putting things together finally on my site, so I will post photos/jumpers here for anyone interested.

Cheers.

 

[Mero]

vid looks good, will be very interested to see the various jumpers.

 

[pekay-norwest]

Great work mate. I have a small interest in USAFL and check it out from time to time, and took purchase of 2 Golden Gate FL training singlets last year, to show my support! Also have a Revs guernsey on my garage wall.

 

[pekay-norwest]

Here's the only USAFL guernsey I have currently. They're even harder to find than AFL jumpers over here. This is New York Magpies. I love the way they turned the back stripes into buildings from NYC.

A question if you don't mind, mate. The Golden Gate jumpers you have, are they these? (That's another USAFL jumper that I think is pretty cool.)

Great to hear you support USAFL! The league is slowly becoming more polished. It's less of a bunch of mates getting together for a kick and more of a serious attempt to bring quality footy here there days.

Personally I would love to see a professional league get underway. I have had some discussions with league board members about it. Maybe in time. The main problems we face are lack of knowledge within the general public of what Australian rules footy is (which will make it hard to get big money involved until/unless that is resolved), quality players (which would be less of a problem if decent money was involved, I'm sure), and lack of appropriate grounds (most venues, even if long enough, would be too narrow, so the game would have to be "Americanized" a bit for it to work on that level).

Na mate, only the singlet they apparently wore to Nationals for warm ups etc. Was on the GGAFL website for memory. I have sent emails to many clubs trying to get a guernsey but not much chop.

 

[Costa fc]

That jumper's none too shabby. Dig the monogram.

Keep the info coming Maggotz. Really interesting to see how foreigners put their own twist on our game.

 

[Cory]

Love the NY Magpies guernsey, the back is very creative.

 

[Bryce_Jersey17]

Love the NY Magpies guernsey, the back is very creative.

The same with the Golden Gaters. Love that design

 

[Whoopy42]

I have sent emails to many clubs trying to get a guernsey but not much chop.

Don't mean to get too far off topic, but are other people interested in jumpers from the US? I'm involved with a USAFL club and we're going to be having some jumpers made in the next few weeks for the teams in our local league. If there's some interest it may be possible for us to let people buy their own. We don't have the money to have extras made up front and sell them later, but we could let people pre-order jumpers which we could add to our team orders, and then we'd ship them over once we got them. The proceeds would help us keep growing the sport over here. If there's some interest I could start another thread somewhere with more info.

 

[Whoopy42]

Portland - the PAFL. Should be getting jumpers made for the Ospreys, Cascades, and Brewers in the near future, we've already got a set of old Port Adelaide jumpers.

 

[Whoopy42]

Well, this is the final design for the Ospreys, which are going to be the first set:

Still working on the other two.