Port Malmö Maulers

Danish Australian Football League

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).

Participation

With over 300 seniors and 80 juniors participating annually, DAFL is often considered the largest Australian Rules football competition outside the English speaking world.

History

In 1989 Mick Sitch (cousin of Rob 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 in 2007 are the North Copenhagen Barracudas, Farum Cats, Copenhagen Crocs, Jutland Shinboners, Port Malmö Maulers 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 (2007) president is Mark White.

Clubs

Current Premier League teams

Jutland

Since 2005, the Jutland Shinboners have been the sole representative team from this region in the DAFL premier league. Feeding into the Shinboners is a local league based around clubs in Aalborg and Århus.

The Aalborg Kangaroos were formed in 1993, the first DAFL club outside Copenhagen and lasted until 2003, when with the DAFL league restructure, the Aalborg club created two squads, the Kangaroos and the Power for the newly-formed Jutland Conference.

The Århus Bombers formed in 1997, as the DAFL's seventh club and the second in Jutland. When the league restructured in 2003, Århus competed in the 3-team Jutland Conference with the two squads from Aalborg, then in 2005 becoming a feeder side for the Shinboners in the DAFL premier league while continuing to play in the Jutland local league.

Zealand

There are currently three teams from Zealand in the DAFL Premier League, the Farum Cats, North Copenhagen Barracudas and Copenhagen Crocodiles.

The club in Farum, originally dubbed the Lions, formed in late 1994, joining the DAFL for the 1995 season. They reached the grand final in every one of their first four seasons, although they only won the premiership in 1996. Farum have had an active junior department program since 1998, with half of the current senior players originally coming to the club as juniors. A partnership arrangement with the Geelong Football Club (the Cats) of the AFL saw the club change its name and playing strip to match that of the Geelong club, and send senior and regular junior sides on tours of Australia.

The North Copenhagen Barracudas were a foundation club of the DAFL, playing in every season since the league started in 1991. After the 2003 league restructure, the club fielded two senior sides, the Barras and the Cudas. After the 2005 restructure, the club fields the Barracudas team in the DAFL Premier League and two squads in the Copenhagen local league.

The Copenhagen Crocs were also a foundation club of the Danish Australian Football League and have played (in some form) in every season of the DAFL since it began in 1991. With the league restructure in 2005, the Crocs fielded a combined side with the Amager Tigers in the DAFL Premier League, dubbed the Copenhagen Hawks. The Crocs traditionally wore the colours of the Carlton Blues from the AFL. The Crocodiles returned to the Premier League in 2006.

The Amager Tigers, based in Amager in the southern Copenhagen urban area, were formed as the third foundation club of the DAFL, competing in every season (in some form) from 1991 to 2005. The Tigers had the most successful premiership record of any club in the DAFL, however they often struggled for year-to-year consistency, with premiership years followed by a finish near the bottom of the ladder. After the 2005 DAFL restructure, Amager fielded a combined side with the Copenhagen Crocodiles for play in the DAFL Premier League, to be named the Copenhagen Hawks. In early 2006 they announced that they would not field any teams that season, but may do so again in future.

Scania

Main article: Australian rules football in Sweden

Due to its proximity to Denmark, the region of Scania in southern Sweden currently fields two teams in the DAFL Premier League, the South Sweden Saints and Port Malmö Maulers. These two sides draw from a feeder league which is part of the Swedish Australian Football League.

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.