For the second year of the SEAFL (South East Asia Football League) Championship, the Jakarta Bintangs have claimed the title for the second time.
Going into November’s Asian Championships, the Bintangs were undefeated.
The Bintangs were cleaning up everything in their path whether at home or abroad. Scalps included the Singapore Wombats in Singapore. Unfortunately for the Bintangs, the Champs were less successful than they might have expected – but those games were outside the scope of the SEAFL.
AFL Asia President, Phil Johns, congratulated the Bintangs for taking out the Championship for the second time in its two year history. “A great effort by the Bintangs in 2014. They took out the SEAFL – while putting together the Indonesian Garudas National Team which made its inaugural appearance at the AFL’s International Cup in Melbourne”.
Johns added that ,”The record shows very clearly that, by any measure, the Bintangs are a quality Club. Congratulations to retired President John ‘Jedi’ Eddy, (relatively) new President, Brenton Harris and to the very many who have contributed to the Bintangs’ successes on and off the field in 2014. The future looks very bright indeed for this Club.”
The idea of the SEAFL is that teams in South East Asia play four official SEAFL games (outside of tournaments such as the Asian Champs) for the SEAFL Championship. The Championship is very much still in its embryonic stage but it is expected that the concept will be more fully embraced by clubs next year.
The SEAFL will complement the SCAFL (South China AFL) and eventually, a NEAFL (North East Asia) AFL that would see teams from Beijing, Shanghai, Japan and hopefully, Korea (currently there is no AFL team in Korea), join.