Open Tryouts For Collingwood FC Announced

The Denver Bulldogs are proud to announce the first ever Open Tryouts for the AFL.  The Collingwood Magpies are now actively searching for young men with athletic abilities to possibly draft in the future, from the USA.  All members are officially invited to attend. 

We are going to have open tryouts in Denver for Collingwood FC that will be run by a scout for Collingwood.  James Waddell is the official representative of the Collingwood FC, the most successful, historic and famous of the 16 Clubs in the Australian Football League (AFL).

James has an extensive background in both Aussie Rules and professional Baseball.  He represented Australia in baseball in 1992 at the Barcelona Olympics and has scouted for the New York Mets since 1996.  He is an Australian citizen now living in Denver, CO with his wife, Amy.

The Collingwood Football Club is the first club to run a series of official tryouts with the aim to find the FIRST American athlete to play professional Australian Rules Football (Aussie Rules) in Australia. Our first tryout will be in Denver on April 8th & 9th, 2005.   

We will have registration prior to our informational meeting at the Embassy Suites on Friday night April 8th from 7-9pm.  During that meeting we will have Ex-AFL'er Brendon Feddema giving a speech about what it takes to be a player and James from Collingwood FC explaining the tryout process.  On Saturday from 11am-3pm we will have a tryout at a indoor facility and run the recruits through a draft day type session. 

What does Collingwood hope to get from this?  What would Collingwood want to test most at the tryouts?  Derek Hines the National Recruiting Manager for Collingwood replied, “use what is relevant, obviously the more physical attributes, the identification of an athlete who may have the attributes to play the game."  

Denver will be putting out more information on the tryout next week with details for hotel.

If you have any questions, please contact James Waddell at waddellj@comcast or Tom Ellis at tellis41@aol.com.

- Tom Ellis
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