Hi,

I'm emailing from Solomon Islands AFL. We generously received a donation from you guys of a signed Guernsey earlier this year and recently auctioned it off and it went for over $600 AUD which is great!

We held a large exhibition match put together by the commitee last month, which was the culmination of our first year of development. We picked our first national side who took on a combined Barbarians side, consisting of expatriates in Honiara and some other talented young local players.

The day was a huge success, sponsors coming on board to cover all costs, high quality football, jumping castle, facepainting and a live band, Andrew Cadzow from AFL Asia Pacific came out and was really impressed. We also held a raffle and auctioned the donated Guernsey. We managed to raise $10,000 SBD for the day and $4500 came from the auction so thanks a lot for helping.

The money will go towards furthering the development of AFL in the Solomon Islands next year as we head into our biggest year yet, starting a 6 team competition, with a junior comp attached. Going to be a great year.

I have attached some photos of the day but unfortunately our photographer didn't get a shot of the Guernsey being auctioned, several shots with it in frame though.

We hope that we can continue to be a part of the GIANTS community initiatives in the future and as AFL grows here there is a great talent pool/fan base for you guys to work with. Australian Network broadcasts nearly every game over here so with the assistance of TV and our development work the game is growing exponentially.

We are looking for support of uniform donations from AFL clubs, either to assist our junior league or to enter a team into the Senior competiion. The Honiara Giants in the Solomon Islands AFL League... it could work.

Best of luck for next year and I hope we can keep in touch.

Regards,

Eddie Burton
AFL Development Officer
Honiara, Solomon Islands