AFL, or the Australian Football League, is the professional competition in the sport of Australian rules or ‘Aussie rules’ football.
AFL are now taking applications for players aged 16 years and over to compete at the AFL 9s competition to be held at the annual Australian Sikh Games 2018.
Sunil Menon, Multicultural Participation & Stakeholder Manager at the AFL has invited players to participate at the Sydney chapter of the annual sports carnival.
“We aim to be involved in this as part of our longer term engagement with the Indian community with the 2019 edition being held in Melbourne,” said Mr Menon.
"AFL have worked with the organisers of the games to secure grounds for an AFL 9’s competition and Auskick activation.
“The games are usually only for those of Sikh faith, however the event organisers have been kind enough to open the competition to all participants for year one.
The organisers aim to cap the number of teams which will be on a first come first served basis.
Source: Supplied
Teams will need to register through Footyweb.
Until now AFL had a difficult task to reach to the new migrants who have never heard of Australian football, which is a unique Australian game with little exposure in the international circuit.
But now with a particular focus on the delivery and evaluation of the league’s multicultural programs nationally, AFL has started reaching to the new settlers of the country especially the South East Asian countries.
The Australian Sikh Games are a representation of the Sikh community’s competitive spirit and the event forms an integral part of the community’s social calendar.
Every year the games are held in a different capital city and in some major regional areas around Australia.
The games draw large crowds of up to 50, 000 – 60,000 people over three days of the Easter weekend during which 1,400 athletes compete in 15 different sports.
Athletes and spectators from all over the country and overseas, including New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada and the U.K. come to participate in a wide array of traditional Indian and Australian sports and related events.
