Italy
Australian rules football in Italy was first played in 2004 with an attempt to start a league based around the city of Naples, under the name Federazione Italiana di Football Australiano (FItAF). Four teams in Salerno, Naples, San Giorgio a Cremano and Barra were created, but the league ultimately did not get off the ground.
A new group started playing under the name AFL Italia in Milan in July 2009, who created the first national league in Italy in 2010, with the Rome Blues, Genoa Dockers, Milan Aussie Rulers and Lugano Steinbocks.
A friendly match between Rome and Milan in June 2010 became the first match played in Rome. The new league which also includes teams from Genoa and cross Switzerland border city Lugano was supported by prominent Australians Tim Fischer and Amanda Vanstone.
The 2010 AFL Italia premiership was won by the Rome Blues, who defeated Milan in the Grand Final, held in Rome.
Read more about this topic: Australian Rules Football In Europe
Famous quotes containing the word italy:
“I think sometimes that it is almost a pity to enjoy Italy as much as I do, because the acuteness of my sensations makes them rather exhausting; but when I see the stupid Italians I have met here, completely insensitive to their surroundings, and ignorant of the treasures of art and history among which they have grown up, I begin to think it is better to be an American, and bring to it all a mind and eye unblunted by custom.”
—Edith Wharton (1862–1937)
“For us to go to Italy and to penetrate into Italy is like a most fascinating act of self-discovery—back, back down the old ways of time. Strange and wonderful chords awake in us, and vibrate again after many hundreds of years of complete forgetfulness.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Uncle Matthew’s four years in France and Italy between 1914 and 1918 had given him no great opinion of foreigners. “Frogs,” he would say, “are slightly better than Huns or Wops, but abroad is unutterably bloody and foreigners are fiends.””
—Nancy Mitford (1904–1973)