WA Country Looks to USFooty

The General Manager of the Western Australian Country Football League, Cameron Knapton, and Vice President, Terry House, traveled to the US for the USFooty Nationals in mid-October. After being approached by USFooty’s Tony Fairhead, Knapton became convinced that the US provided a great opportunity for WA Country and decided to take the trip to find out more, talk to USFooty about partnering and promote programs already in place.

Knapton was amazed at the size of footy in the US. He organizes the WA Country Carnival, which he believes is the largest footy carnival of its type in Australia - but Knapton was very surprised to learn that the USFooty Nationals is 30% larger than the WA Country carnival.

After a horrendous trip from Australia to Louisville KY which involved hiring a car at New York’s LaGuardia Airport simply to have somewhere to sleep, Knapton and House gave a presentation at USFooty’s Administrator’s Conference. Knapton told the USFooty administrators about a number of programs that WA Country would like to partner with USFooty in developing.

One program that WA Country is already involved in is Tony Fairhead’s Yankaroo program in which American study abroad students from St John’s University (outside of Minneapolis MN) studying at Notre Dame University (in Fremantle WA) get exposed to footy. The original program simply gave the "Johnnies", as they call themselves, a bootcamp in Australian Football taught by professional coaches from various Western Australian professional and amateur clubs. WA Country offered Johnnies who had been through the bootcamp to play in some actual games for Country footy teams. A graduate of the program, Danny Hansen, starred for the Minnesota Freeze in their Division II National Championship winning performance in October.

According to Knapton, WA country teams are looking for players to help fill out their rosters and a program like this not only gives the Americans some playing experience but the whole cultural experience of being at a country football/sporting carnival. On the flip side is great exposure and experience for the country team to have an American pulling on the jumper and running out with the local boys. The Yankaroo women recently played in a WA Country women’s carnival and won! House and Knapton traveled with Tony Fairhead and Rod Grjlusich to Nashville TN to meet with staff at Vanderbilt University to help expand the Yankaroo program to additional universities.

Another program that WA Country is interested in developing is an exchange program for players and officials from USFooty clubs to WA Country clubs. This program would work in a similar way to the exchange between the West Perth Falcons and the Milwaukee Bombers which saw Brett Cousins play for Milwaukee and the Brunmeier brothers play for West Perth. The logistics of such a program have become significantly easier with the recent agreement between the US and Australia to allow “work-travel” visas for under 30s. According to Knapton, “country footy teams are looking for players and we have teams that can cater for players of all levels of ability and experience.”

Overall, Knapton was very excited about developing a relationship with USFooty, and sees a great opportunity to help grow the game in Western Australia and the United States.

- Chris Adams
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