Quotes of the Day

Spread across a manicured football field in groups of 10 or so, the children dart back and forth like the parts of a complex machine. In one group, they mark balls thrown in the air by Aussie Rules players from the St. Kilda Football Club. In another, they awkwardly practice handballing to the veteran players. They smack into tackling bags, play bullrush, and try to evade the tackles of lurking Saints. And they learn how to scoop balls off the turf and kick short into the muscled arms of two-time Brownlow medalist Robert Harvey.

This frenetic scene took place late last year not in Melbourne or Adelaide but in Potchefstroom, on the high veldt near Johannesburg. Most of the kids were from nearby black townships, bussed in for a couple of hours' practice with players most had never heard of. For the kids, the meet was a chance to try a new sport. For the St. Kilda players, it was a key part of summer training. And for Australian Rules football, it was part of a push into a most unlikely market: Africa. "We think it's the best game in the world," says Saints coach Grant Thomas. "And with the natural skills and enthusiasm of the kids over here, I hope it spreads."

Aussie Rules was first played in South Africa just over a century ago by globetrotting Australian miners and soldiers on R & R from the Boer War. But a local competition petered out and "footy" disappeared. Then, in 1997, a group of Australian soldiers played a few exhibition games and ran coaching clinics in an attempt to reintroduce the sport. Four years later, the Australian Football League got serious and, linking up with Australian Volunteers International, sent a development officer to South Africa to spread the footy gospel.

In rugby union and soccer-mad South Africa, Aussie Rules remains an oddity. At the Potchefstroom training session, one school teacher supervising his students laughs when told that Aussie Rules teams have 22 players, 18 of whom are playing at any one time. "What kind of a sport has so many players?" says Robert Noah. "It's like a miracle to us that you can get so many people on the field."

But footy fever is quietly spreading, partly because the game lacks the racial overtones that, 11 years after the end of apartheid, still mark rugby as a mainly white sport and soccer as a black one. Thanks to a series of energetic young development officers funded by the AFL, Aussie Rules now boasts more than 1,000 regular players, from 9-year-olds to seniors in their 20s. In 2002, the South African national team, the Buffaloes, traveled to Melbourne to compete in the inaugural International Cup, which brings together such Aussie Rules outposts as Canada, New Zealand and Samoa. Though they finished last, South Africa are tipped to do better at the second tournament in August, if they can find a sponsor to pay their fares. "I think we're going to win our first international game," says Steven Harrison, head coach for AFL South Africa, who is busy putting together a team of big former rugby players and speedy black kids from the townships. "There's no reason we can't win it in 2008."

His counterparts in Australia are hoping Africa will become a new source of talent for their clubs. Seven years ago, Mtutuzeli Hlomela, then 17, won a football scholarship through the South Australian and Western Cape sports ministries. Until he got to the interview, "I thought it was a soccer scholarship," says Hlomela, who managed to talk his way into the position based on his vague memory of a couple of snippets of games he'd seen on television. Hlomela proved to be a natural and played for the Sturt Football Club under-19s in the South Australian Football League.

Now back in South Africa, Hlomela teaches at a Johannesburg school and coaches Aussie Rules as part of the AFL's development program. "Kids think it's something like rugby at first. Then they ask me, 'Why do you kick the ball so much? Why do you have to bounce the ball?' " says Hlomela, taking a break from the Saints training session. "But there's plenty of talent out there - kids with flair and speed. We just need to get them exposed to the game at an early age. Once they have Aussie Rules players as heroes, we'll have them for good."

• Simon Robinson/Potchefstroom
• It may never rival rugby union or soccer, but "footy" is winning South African fans