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 8, 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 Crocodiles, 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.
In 2011, prior to the 2012 season, the DAFL constitution was rewritten, changing the way DAFL is run. DAFL now has a board and they put down a league committee to run the actual league. This is to free up time for the board to focus on spreading knowledge of Australian Rules Football. The committee has a member from each club in the league, while the board has four members; a president, a vice president, a casheer and an Elite Committee President, who as the title suggests is the president of the DAFL Elite Committee, who is responsible for the Danish national team as well as tryouts for European teams.
The current (2012) president is Niels Schjønneman. The vice president is Troels Ottesen, the casheer is Michael Jensen and the Elite Committee President is Jens Djernes.
Confirmed teams for the 2012 season is Jutland Shinboners, Helsingborg Saints, Port Malmö Mailers, North Copenhagen Barracudas and reigning premiers Farum Cats. This brings the total amount of teams to 5, 1 less than 2011 with the withdrawal of Copenhagen Crocs.
Read more about this topic: Danish Australian Football League
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