The rest of the Austrian Football League (AFL) will kick off this weekend with the first set of games coming on Saturday, April 2. The two games will feature the Znojmo Knights hosting the Dacia Vikings and the Swarco Raiders visiting the Telfs Patriots.
However, these are not the same Raiders and Vikings faces that we are used to seeing in the AFL. With the departure of both AFL teams to the European League of Football (ELF) earlier this year the Raiders and Vikings second teams were promoted up to the AFL as part of a league reshuffling.
In both sets of Saturday contests each side will be seeing a familiar face as the Knights and Patriots are also newcomers to the AFL from the second division.
Heading up the Raiders offense will be dual-threat quarterback Isaiah Weed who played for the Kragujevac Wild Boars in Serbia last year. The signal caller for the Vikings will be Nico Hrouda, the young Austrian star in the making. This teenager has generated a lot of buzz in Austria for being the future of Austrian football.
On the other side of the field, the Knights will be quarterbacked by CJ Howard. And for the Patriots will be Euro-traveling quarterback Aaron Ellis, formerly of ELF’s Stuttgart Surge, who will be playing for his fifth team since 2019.