The Diner's Rookie Diary
by Sam Monson
2/7/2008
 
At the end of the last instalment, preparations were well underway for the big game – DCU vs. The Belfast Bulls – if we won, we were in the playoffs. Well this time ladies and gents, it's Game-day!
 
I had packed my gear up on the Saturday, ensured everything was washed – let's face it, there's nothing worse than putting on something that smells like arse – arranged to pick up a fellow receiver en route to the coach in the morning, and set my alarm – for 7.20am...on a Sunday! Then I hit the hay. I was prepared, hell, I dominated preparation. This was going to be military precision: Awake at 7.20, up a 7.30, out by 7.45, pick up Dave at 8.00...
 
I woke up, glanced at my watch 8.01am. Arghh!!
 
Instead of the usual grace period of lying in bed cursing the world for making you get up so early, I was so late that I had to leap straight out of bed, get ready and go. I was supposed to pick up Dave Mullins at 8am, and the coach was leaving at 8.45. This was not the way the morning was meant to begin.
 
So I finally arrived to pick up Dave at about 8.15, and we set off for DCU, where a luxury coach awaited to wing us northward to Belfast. OK, so it wasn't luxury, but it was a coach, and the chances are, it would make it that far. We arrived at the meeting point with time to spare, thanks largely to a city empty of people. Let's face it, what other lunatics are up at that hour on a Sunday?
 
Naturally, with this being a trip to play football, the in-journey movie was a choice of Any Given Sunday, or Friday Night Lights. Since the Permian Panthers managed to choke away their final game of the year (uh...spoiler alert. Too late? Whoops), this was clearly not the right message to be sending. Any Given Sunday was thrown on the box.
 
As we neared Belfast, the driver took a series of wrong turns, requiring the coach to pull off an impressive 3 point turn in the middle of a country road. We pulled into the 'City of Belfast Playing Fields', with the city of Belfast itself nowhere to be seen, just as the film's closing credits rolled, prompting the more cynical amongst us to suggest that the driver had merely been killing time with wrong turns to see the ending.
 
By this time, those of us who had to leap out of bed and leg it out of the house at short notice were suffering from the lack of breakfast – and a trip to the shops was organised. Of course it then occurred to us that the strange and curious folk of the North don't actually accept money, and insist on some strange currency they call 'Sterling'. Clearly this is a made up currency, as proven by the fact that Northern Bank £5 notes could quite easily be mistaken for book tokens. Shoddy book tokens. Frankly any money that looks like that shouldn't be allowed to be legal tender.
 
Anyway, the away party returned, bearing sandwiches, God bless them! (I owe you a few quid Mo!). Just in the nick of time too, by my calculations I was about 3 minutes from death by starvation. When you're built like I am there are no fat reserves to keep you going. You miss a meal and you're really dicing with death.
 
We eventually got changed, with our coaches, David Rothwell and Steve Porteous, suiting up to join the battle. This would be a real team effort, all hands on deck.
 
Up at the pitch it soon became clear that there was a fierce wind blowing from one corner of the end zone. This was going to make passing an issue. Warm ups proved as much, with receivers able to coral anything short going down wind, but finding the ball would drift in the wind if sent deep. Practically this meant that the ball would actually swap shoulders as you were tracking it, making it a nightmare to haul in. And that was going in the good direction! Throwing against the wind would cause the ball to die and hang there waiting for whatever fate befell it.
 
Still, we remained confident. Even if we had to wait for our chances, we would attack when we got the wind at our backs, and we felt there was no way their cornerbacks could live with our receivers on the edge.
 
Kickoff time came, and it soon became apparent that this was going to be a close game. Both teams fought for everything they got, and throwing into the wind proved predictably prohibitive, with both teams trading interceptions into the wind for much of the game.
 
This battle was being fought and controlled on the ground, and neither team could quite string together enough successful plays to get the ball into the end zone. Saints corner, Alex Trimble, thanks no doubt to his brand new pink boot-laces (they were all he could find...sure!) was having a stellar game, picking off one pass and breaking up several more to keep us in the game.
 
It was becoming a war of field position. Kicking or punting into the wind had the same issues as passing, so it became a game of trying to set yourself up for when the wind was at your back. The first half flew by, and when the half time whistle blew, the game was deadlocked at 0-0.
 
There was a real possibility that this game was going to end up scoreless, a result that ironically would have sent us to the playoffs. Frankly, had we been unable to score for the entire game and gone through on the basis of a 0-0 tie, we wouldn't have deserved a playoff spot!
 
Needless to say, this was getting tense. We had mounted a serious drive in the first half into the wind only to have it end with an interception on a tipped ball. Again we saw a drive killed by an illegal formation penalty (may have been a little bit my fault...or entirely). We were knocking on the door, but had so far been unable to get anybody to answer.
 
The second half began with us playing into the wind, and again the game was one of field position. Then the 3rd quarter ended, and we got the wind. This was our time, and QB Cormac Eklof called for the Bunch formation. This was a 4-wide set, with 3 WRs on one side in a bunch. The Bulls secondary had a fit, and struggled to line up covering this new and previously unseen formation. This allowed us enough space to get some passes off. The offense was slowly marching down the field, assisted by a few spectacular catches.
 
David Mullins caught a ball before being walloped from behind, causing his entire body to fly through the air before he landed – still clutching the ball. Our surprise from last week's training, Geoff Coleman also made a few key grabs. RB Dave McMahon, who had been running the ball hard all day, continued to grind yardage as the Saints got into the red zone. Then came the moment of truth, and a ball was fired into the end zone to be hauled in by Colm Collins. Touchdown Saints! 6-0 up, and with our kicker, we decided to kick the XP. The kick was fine, but the protection broke down and the ball was blocked, setting up a seriously tense final 4 minutes of the game.
 
The Bulls began a drive, with the Saints offense waiting nervously on the sidelines. Their nippy running backs had been giving the D problems all day long, and having started off on their own 10 yard line, they had soon crossed midfield. Eventually the Saints D made their stand, and the Bulls were driven back, before failing to convert on 4th down, turning the ball over with more than 2 minutes remaining – crucially more than we could run off by taking knees. We needed a first down.
 
After being walked back for a penalty, the next running play went badly wrong, and the ball was fumbled, only for the Bulls to come up with it, with over a minute still remaining on the clock. Luckily the wind was at our back, and whilst the Bulls only had 50 yards to travel, they had no real way of passing for big gains. Some ferocious tackling by the Saints D caused the Bulls to come up short, and the game was won. 6-0 was enough to come away with the win, and a spot in the playoffs!
 
With a team featuring 11 rookie starters, the DCU Saints had reached the playoffs in their 3rd year of existence. Someone had better be taking notes for the film script.
 
After the usual post match handshakes, Coach tried in vain to run from the traditional Gatorade shower, or 'icy water in a cool bucket' as it was in this case, but was soon found out for pace and stamina, and brought to football justice.
 
We hit the changing rooms, and got ready for the return journey in the coach. After stopping off in a Sainsbury's for some top quality nibbles and booze (scotch eggs, the food of Kings...where the hell have they disappeared to in recent years??), we fired up Friday Night Lights on the coach TV and basked in the glow of victory. Sorry, that was sunburn, not victory, but what the hell, we were glowing!
 
After arriving back at HQ, there was a mad rush for the nearest public house with a television to watch the end of the Euro 2008 final. The night resulted in a few team members, well...one, devising a top quality drunken playoff song, which in all seriousness is a guaranteed #1 hit should it ever get recorded. Honest.
 
The Saints now sit with a 4-3 record, safely secure with a Wild Card ticket to the playoffs.
 
Next week sees us take on the University of Limerick Vikings, before a week off to prepare for the Cork Admirals in the first round of the playoffs. Hey, once you're at the dance..
 
Archive Rookie Diary:
Rookie Diary June 26th
Rookie Diary June 12th
Rookie Diary May 28th
Rookie Diary May 10th
Rookie Diary April 29th
Rookie Diary April 17th
Rookie Diary April 5th
Rookie Diary April 2nd