Diary of a Saint
by Sam Monson
28/11/2009
Week 2 - The College Tournament
After another week or training it was time for the inaugural Irish American Football College Championship.
This is a new tournament set up this season by the University of Limerick to be contested between all of the teams in the IAFL with a university affiliation: The UL Vikings, the Trinity Thunderbolts, the DCU Saints and the UCD Sentinels.
UL are the two-time defending IAFL Champions and part of me thinks they're taking the mick a little by setting up another championship involving themselves, two sides that have never played a full 11s game to date, and the Saints, but what the hell, it was potential silverware, a couple of games, and a trip away for the team, it would be good craic if nothing else.
After working late into the night on Thursday, I was up at 8am, out of the house by 8.20, and fighting my way across Friday morning Dublin traffic. If you have no point of reference for that think of those lines out of a city that's being evacuated due to some impending doom in all of those movies – you know, lanes of stationary cars going nowhere fast – giant cloud of black death behind them...Same kind of deal, except this time they're going into the city, and the black death in the distance is called Tallaght. As an aside, all of these cars seem to be being driven by idiots, idiots intent on slowing down my journey in whatever way they can.
I arrived at the meeting point expecting to see the coach that I planned to use for some powerful sleeping on the way down. The coach wasn't there though, instead there was some kind of matchbox toy parked by the curb inside which we had to cram everybody going down to Limerick, as well as their football gear and bags for a 2 night trip. At that moment a little piece of me died inside and I kissed goodbye to the concept of sleep.
The good news continued to come throughout the morning. First we were told that one of the matches was going to be played on astro turf. Now when I say astro turf, there's a chance you're conjuring up images of, you know, something that bears at least a passing resemblance to grass, albeit a bit more plastic like. Take that image and burn it right now, then have the ashes removed and used as fertilizer. Instead imagine a field of concrete, put some felt on top of it, and rub some sand into the surface. Mmmm, abrasive.
Then came the best news: We were making the trip without a QB. Our starting QB had apparently pulled out during the week, and the game plan was to run a lot of Wildcat – well, pretty much entirely Wildcat! I saw Scott on the bus who had been playing QB in training so far and figured the plan was to have him run as much as he was throwing, as he's a real threat with his legs too, but it turns out he was carrying a thigh injury from the last training session – so when Coach said Wildcat, he really meant it – we would be playing without anybody who had played any meaningful time at QB!
Obviously as a receiver, this was outstanding news.
We began drawing up trick plays on the bus. Vinnie, TE by trade this season, took the pen and paper and went to work. Only a couple of his new plays involved a TD pass to the TE! Because he'd been so selfless in his play design I decided to jot down one for him – the Vinnie special! Flood everybody out one way; TE cuts short across the grain, money!
As it turns out the visions of skinned knees and elbows from the astro were unnecessary. Ireland had been getting drowned with rain the week or so before we set off and half of the country was underwater. When we finally arrived at the hotel our window view was of a lake that wasn't supposed to be a lake. The UL Grounds staff was understandably none too keen on the idea of a troop of heavy, padded, people tearing the pitches to ribbons, so an arrangement was made that they could be used on Saturday as long as they weren't to be used at all on Friday.
Friday became a Flag Football tournament on the astro pitches. Each squad was divided up into roughly 7 a side teams to play flag football. For many of us this was our first experience playing flag, and barely any of us had any concept of the rules, let alone the finer points of the game. I ended up on DCU Team 1, along with Dave 'Chick Flick' McMahon, our starting running back, Brian, a TE/LB, Derek, lineman extraordinaire, Thomas, Adam, and one of the rookies. Clearly this was to be the star team of the day!
Since none of us were exactly established passers, we took turns at QB initially. My stint provided some *ahem* 'unconventional' throws, including a 2-handed jump-pass. Kind of a cross between a basketball jump shot and a rugby throw-in from the lineout. Not exactly how they teach it in the textbook, but it did wind up being contested by two of our players and none of the opposition (yes, that is another way of saying it was incomplete…). The real masterpiece throw was an underarm, spiral fling that resulted in a touchdown. Imagine firing an American football like a discus, with a spiral Peyton Manning would be proud of! If that's not in a textbook, it should be! I also had some decent moments playing DB, enabling me to break out some top quality trash talking phrases like “not in my house!” and our usual DB, Adam, was on receiving fire, hauling in some great catches during the day as a receiver on offense!
Our real success though came with Dave back at QB. We drew up 2 or 3 plays, and ran them exhaustively, with Dave scrambling for huge gains when he saw an opening or felt pressure from a blitz. We rode that success all the way to an unbeaten record (our only tie coming to DCU 2 in a game where the clock ran out just before we were about to score!), and a victory over one of the UL sides in the final on the very last throw of the game! Whatever else came of the weekend we were the Flag Football Tournament Champions!
Saturday came along and it had been raining most of the night – the pitches that must have been none too clever on the Friday were practically marshland at this stage. Kick off was scheduled for 11am, and Coach had been around the rooms hammering on the doors at 8.45am. Our room took this as more of an information bulletin than a command to get up and get moving, and so were a little bit later than everyone else getting to the campus and changing rooms. After the breakfast of champions (mini fry up!), I made my way to get changed and made it just in time to get out with everyone else for the game.
The first matches had been changed to shortened, college-overtime style affairs to get a quick final decided. UL quickly dispatched Trinity, leaving us to play UCD, still without a recognised QB on the team. The only player we had with any experience passing the ball was on the way down as the game kicked off, and would hopefully arrive before the final games.
Due to the lack of numbers I was down as a starting wide receiver, as well as starting safety, and I'd also be on Special Teams for the first time outside of some emergency returns last season. All this on a pitch that could have substituted pretty well for a Vietnamese rice paddy.
In the first game the Wildcat offense was going pretty well, but at the end of a run Dave took a whack on the head and had to leave the field. Ordinarily that's not a disaster, but on this occasion it left the huddle without any passer, and without anybody at all in charge. The call came in from somewhere to run the ball, but we decided to ignore that, since we were close to the goal line and they had to be selling out to stop that. Vinnie called upon Davy Byrne – that's Davy Byrne, the O-lineman!! – To throw the ball, after seeing him rack up a perfect QB rating in his stints at QB in the flag tournament the day before. I ran a quick out from the left hand side of the formation, dragging away the cornerback and leaving the TE wide open underneath. Davy connected for the game-winning TD! We were in the final, against, predictably enough, UL.
Some of you that read the Rookie Diary series may remember my comments on the UL Vikings, who have what is by far and away the most ridiculous and bent warm-up routine in sports. They break out this choreographed number with clapping and chants and end up looking like a team of Morris dancers with pads on. I feel I was too kind on this last time, and want to really bring out how stupendously horrific it is. They act as if they had designated someone to watch the NFL, College Football, and anything else they could get their hands on, and jot down all the most cringe worthy, uncomfortable, homo-erotic things they could find, and then they decided to see how they could incorporate all of them into their pre and post-game routine. In fact if anybody has seen the film BASEketball, think of the San Francisco team…if you haven't seen it, watch it, it's funny, THEN think of the SF team.
We actually arrived at the pitch just as they had finished their warm-ups and were walking hand-in-hand back to their side of the pitch. (This behaviour it turns out wasn't confined to the pitch – at the bar for the awards ceremony later that evening one of their number got hold of the microphone and broke out a whole range of choreographed chants that they all responded to in perfect sync). Needless to say if this team ever becomes like that I'm quitting. There's quite simply no reason to ever act the tool in that spectacular a fashion, at least not without the aid of a lot of alcohol and a bet.
The UL game was about to kick off, and our QB had arrived! Connor had grabbed a lift down with an old Saints player also kitting up for the day, IAFL Commissioner no less, Mo Cosgrave.
In the conditions and with the limited amount of bodies we had the game was tough. After playing well and running hard, Dave again was injured, getting his knee trapped under a pile of tacklers and had to leave the field, and the losses were starting to mount on both sides of the ball. At safety I did ok in coverage, but had a terrible time trying to see my way through the fakes and misdirection that UL were going with in their run game. I was pretty much entirely at fault for their first score when I took a couple of steps the wrong way on a fake and never made it back across to the correct sideline where the run was actually going. I was able to make a desperation dive at a tap tackle but never made it, instead leaving a 10-yard furrow in the pitch for my efforts.
By the time we hit half time the decision was made to call the game for the safety of all involved. The injuries were mounting and that surface wasn't really safe for anybody, but it was good experience for all the young players all the same.
After the football was finished everybody got down to the serious task of drinking, this is the Irish American Football League afterall. After the awards ceremony we grabbed a cab, about the size of the 'coach' used for the journey down, to hit the town. A few people were a little worse for wear by the end of the evening, with the last sighting of Brian being him stumbling across the club to point out to the other colleges' players how useless they were.
The next morning we all stumbled back on the bus for the journey back up to Dublin, or civilisation, as it's known. This time we had actually been given a coach, rather than someone's old shoe on wheels for the task, which was just as well, because most of its inhabitants were suffering. There was only one thing that could attack the kind of hangover most of us were reeling from – oh yea, you guessed it…McDonalds! The bus emptied into a McDonalds and we all dominated some nasty but oh so awesome food… seriously, when was the last time you had a McDonalds Sundae? Then it was back onto the bus for the last 2 hours of the hell-journey while the hangover really began to kick in.
We finally hit the city and went our separate ways. We had been to stab-city and emerged unstabbed, we had won a flag football tournament and received no prize, and we had lost in the final of the inaugural Irish American Football College Championship to the 2 time defending IAFL champions…who'd have seen that coming?
Tune in next time as I have a bit of a bash at learning to tackle.
( Check out last weeks edition )
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