From Australia to Israel, on a footballing peace mission

[oberliner]

To most passers-by, it would have appeared as if the group of men chasing an oval-shaped ball around Tel Aviv's Hayarkon Park in late July were playing rugby or American football.

Not many would have heard of Australian rules football, let alone have known that the group they were watching were preparing to represent the "Peace Team" - a mix of Israelis and Palestinians slated to participate in this year's Australian Football League International Cup.

The Peace Team is funded by the Peres Center for Peace and the East Jerusalem-based Al-Quds Association for Democracy and Dialogue. The idea for the team first came up when James Demetriou, brother of AFL Chief Executive Andrew Demetriou, was introduced to the Peres Center during a trip to Israel. Soon afterwards, the AFL approved the project, and five time VFL premiership player Robert DiPierdomenico was appointed head coach.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1012795.html

[LeftishBrit]

1. Sounds like a great project!

Hope the team does really well in the Cup!

[oberliner]

2. Here is an article about the Peace Team (with photos)

According to Kresner, "The Peace Team was organised through the Peres Center for Peace/Al-Quds Association for Democracy & Dialogue's “Twinned Peace Sport Schools” program which includes some 2,000 youth aged 6 to 13 years. Coordinators and coaches in the program put the word out in the different communities that we were looking to recruit an Australian Football team, and then we had about 100 guys turn up for the first meeting, and more in the subsequent weeks."

Following this "an initial introduction meeting was held in January, where we introduced the game by showing a DVD as well as featuring a practice match played by expat Aussies. Then for the following 2 months or so we had many different guys coming to the training sessions, checking whether they were interested in learning the sport. We targeted players from sporting backgrounds, mainly from ball skills backgrounds, taking fitness and physique into consideration as well as basic coordination skills with the oval ball. From March we have had a squad in training, coming to practices at least once or twice a week."

http://www.worldfootynews.com/article.php/20080804143520144

[Violet_Crumble]

3. Not content with trying to make it a national game, they're now trying to pollute the world with it?

Evil bastards! How about bringing Israelis and Palestinians together to play a real game like Rugby League! The AFL are so desperate to have aerial ping pong played on an international arena so they can pretend it's on the same level as League and Union that it's hilarious. The game makes no sense. There's no offside, just guys in really short shorts jumping in the air a lot, and you need a degree in maths to work out how the scoring works. Moving South Melbourne to Sydney and rebranding them as the Sydney Swans so the game could be claimed to be a national game didn't win over this former Sydneysider. As much as I can't stand cricket, if I'm given a choice between having to sit through a approx 90 minute game of Aussie Rules and a five day Test Match that ends in a draw where I'm forced to listen to an iPod full of nothing but Kylie Minogue and I'm not allowed to get distracted by seagulls or anything more exciting than what's happening on the field, I'll take the cricket any day. Goddam, but I hate Aussie Rules!