The Australian women's squad is a developmental group of women from the indigenous and multicultural development programs.  So not really "Australia" per se, hence why it's listed as "Australia Indigenous/Multicultural (IM)".

Similar somewhat to the sides in the men's multicultural division at the IC08.

If it was an all-Australian women's side, I'd be guessing it'd be well stronger than PNG.  Though they could be looking at a genuine chance of Australia vs Rest of the World in women's footy in the not too distant future.

Even as a development side, it's a bloody impressive win by PNG!

Was anyone aware that the PNG women could actually play?

You're right, it's an impressive win first up... I'll have to admit that tipping the women's matches was pretty much guesswork, for me at least!

I'm told the Irish women were pretty handy too against Canada.  Looks like it might be a Ireland vs PNG final in the women's, though wait and see how the USA go - as with Canada, they've had women's footy clubs for a few years now.

I tipped them!

They sent some girls sides to QLD comps, and women's footy is doing very well in QLD, and the PNG girls won most things, so that was the hint.

If you look up the top of our website (at time of writing) you'll see a links to the women's previews.  In particular http://www.worldfootynews.com/article.php?story=20110807141315235 for PNG Flame.

Definitely deserve a spot in the Australian national champs, either as a part of a world team or start them off as a purely PNG side in Div 2 - I reckon they'd go very well.

Still, I suspect the Aussie side might have some decent players down in Melbourne who will play in the matches down there, just couldn't get up to Sydney at the start.

One of the 'stars' in the local womens footy here in Melbourne was teaching for a while at my kids school,.....and, well, she was Irish too!!!

Makes me wonder how much Irish girls play Gaelic and stuff, becuase there's the well known Irish team in Sydney, the Bondi Shamrocks.

Australia might be hoping to convince a few of them to nominate for Australia and not Ireland!!!

Gaelic Women's Football (Ladies Football as they call it) in Ireland is huge with participation as far as I recall reading being well over 100,000 and played through schools to adult club level.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladies'

http://ladiesgaelic.ie/ 

So no wonder Irish ladies play so well.

The Gaelic women's football has no bumping unlike the men's Gaelic football and allows direct pick up of the ball from the ground (like in Australian Football) - this makes it a particularly fast free flowing game.

It may be very contentious to suggest but I think Women's Australian Football could do with softer tackling rules too.  Some who currently play it probably would disagree - but I think Women's footy would really attract many women's soccer and netball/basketball players if there were some modification of the body contact. 

Just a thought, be interesting to see what the women playing in the IC think?