American Football in London

Mitsurugi CP · Post by **Mitsurugi CP** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 10:48 pm

Did anyone else manage to see the game at all? What about those of you in England? Was there any kind of hype at all, or was it apparent, even in England, just how much the Dolphins suck this year?

I'm curious as to what all you wonderful British people have to say about this move by the NFL to gain more international acceptance for professional American Football (as opposed to the amateur-league NFL Europe that recently went under).

I wanted to watch the game, but it wasn't being broadcast on any of the channels in my area. Apparently, it wasn't a very exciting game, but very few games that get played in the rain are offensive shootouts.

Bazz · Post by **Bazz** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 11:09 pm

There wasn't loads of hype about it, but there was some. Apparently the tickets sold out really fast and were selling for £350 on ebay, everyone I talked about it wasn't interested in watching the game, but I suppose some people somewhere were as it sold out...
I guess it's good that they're trying to get other places involved, but I can't see it catching on really. Also their timing is pretty poor, what with the rugby world cup having just finished and all.

Yuka · Post by **Yuka** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 12:57 am

The only thing I heard about it was some overblown news story about one of the players having never heard of London, didn't realise the major language of the country was English, and thought it impossible for black people to be born here.

Bazz · Post by **Bazz** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 1:33 am

Ha, I didn't see that myself, sounds pretty amusing though. If they couldn't get their heads around that them I'm sure they're having a tough time coming to terms with football here meaning a game where you kick a ball with your foot.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 12:46 pm

The game was terrible. A bad team playing badly and a medium-to-good team playing badly. Apparently soccer fields in the rain are not conducive the playing American football. Everybody fell down a lot. Very sloppy.

Do people in England blow whistles at Soccer and Rugby games too? The RDM had never heard fans doing it before - it really disrupts the game, since the whistle is a pretty important part. Fans either have more respect for the game or fans in the UK don't quite understand the rules.

Yuka · Post by **Yuka** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 12:50 pm

Yep, whistles are used quite a bit. We've learned to distinguish between fan-whistles and ref-whistles quite easily, It's got nothing to do with respect, nor does it disrupt.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 1:10 pm

It disrupted the American game quite a bit...though the game would still have been terrible without it. Fans in the US don't whistle.

Bazz · Post by **Bazz** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 1:06 am

Occasionally someone will whistle, but more likely they'll shout some kind of abuse at someone instead and even if people did whistle, come on, seriously, these guys get paid enough that they should be able to distinguish between the whistles from the crowd and the whistles from the ref. Most games use whistles and no one else seems to have this problem.
I read in the racing post that apparently the US contingent are complaining about the quality of the ground not affording enough grip, what a load of crap. Anyone who plays a sport on grass knows that you wear different length studs in different conditions, if they didn't wear long enough studs then that's their fault, blaming the ground because you fell over is like blaming the air because you're out of breath.
The feeling most people seem to have been left with is best described as "meh", and the opinion the "footballers" left behind is that they're a bunch of uncoordinated, ill educated, whingers.

Also, on the subject of shite conditions for sports, we sent one of the best racehorses in the world, George Washington, to the US to compete in the breeders cup meeting the day before this match and the conditions were so bad that he died.

Damien · Post by **Damien** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 1:28 am

There was quite a lot of hype this weekend, but it was mostly WTF LOOK AT DIS! NFL IN LONDON! CRAZY SHIII!
Cheerleaders were on the front covers of some of the crappier papers today.

Tickets were fuck expensive

Etch · Post by **Etch** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 6:08 am

The Robo D Monkey wrote:It disrupted the American game quite a bit...though the game would still have been terrible without it. Fans in the US don't whistle.

Haha. I think the distractions helped the dolphins defense play better.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 4:13 pm

Perhaps they did.

They wore 3/4 inch cleets, some players were wearing them over and inch long by the end of the game. That's not exactly short.

The abuse is something American players are used to, the whistling is not. Even watching the game on TV, there were a couple of times when the RDM thought the play had been blown dead, but it was actually a fan's whistle.

The UK got a ridiculously awful football game to watch. The NFL screwed themselves over.

Bazz · Post by **Bazz** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 1:44 am

The Robo D Monkey wrote: The UK got a ridiculously awful football game to watch. The NFL screwed themselves over.

Well, they shouldn't have played right after the rugby world cup. Everyone here who loves big contact sports has been saturated with wicked rugby for the last month so probably watched with massive bias about how shite it would be, and the people that don't like rugby wouldn't like this either. Poor timing.
I'm a massive rugby fan but I'll tell you what, if I'm ever near any you American football loving chaps I'll pop by and we'll have a drunken day of watching American football while you explain what the fuck's going on and why it was good. That especially goes for you RDM, you've got a lot of explaining to do

Damien · Post by **Damien** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 9:31 am

What I can't stand about American Football is the whole strop-start-stop of it.
It seems as soon as any action happens, the game stops again for a minute.
Makes it really hard to get involved in really

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 12:59 pm

The RDM would be happy to explain the intricacies of American Football, as well as the virtues, but he'd expect the same treatment for Rugby. Not for Soccer, though. He understands Soccer, and realizes that it's probably the single most overrated thing that there is.

EDIT> Or you could just pick up a copy of Madden (the RDM can't vouch for 2008 or 2007, but '06 was good), jack it up to All-Star, and play a couple of seasons.

Lord Golbez · Post by **Lord Golbez** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 2:40 pm

Damien wrote:What I can't stand about American Football is the whole strop-start-stop of it.
It seems as soon as any action happens, the game stops again for a minute.
Makes it really hard to get involved in really

This is why, while I hate watching pretty much any sport, American Football takes a special place as my least favorite to watch.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:06 pm

It's about structure! Logical start and end points! How much strategy can you possibly have when everything just goes nonstop forever? It's anarachy! Football is regimented, organized, and fairly cerebral instead of purely physical.

Lord Golbez · Post by **Lord Golbez** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:45 pm

It seems to me though that most of the time the strategy fails because someone's tackled before the ball gets anywhere. Hard to tell though. It's almost impossible for me to ever see what's going on unless a player actually breaks away from the crowd, which usually doesn't happen.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:58 pm

If the guy with the ball gets tackled before he goes anywhere, that means that the defense's strategy is working much better than the offenses. But tackles behind the line of scrimmage, while commonplace, aren't what happen most of the time.

You need a bigger, higher definition TV to appreciate football. And good glasses.

Mitsurugi CP · Post by **Mitsurugi CP** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 2:24 pm

The Robo D Monkey wrote:The game was terrible. A bad team playing badly and a medium-to-good team playing badly. Apparently soccer fields in the rain are not conducive the playing American football. Everybody fell down a lot. Very sloppy.

Actually, the Giants are probably one of the best teams in the NFC, with the Cowboys and the Packers. I got to see a recap of the game, and damn it was pretty sloppy, but that's generally how games played in the rain are. Had the weather been better, it would have been a blowout.

Bazz wrote:The feeling most people seem to have been left with is best described as "meh", and the opinion the "footballers" left behind is that they're a bunch of uncoordinated, ill educated, whingers.

That's unfortunate that the game was played so poorly, but you are largely right about the ill-educated part. A lot of American Football players and basketball players who make it to the NFL or NBA spend all of their time focused on athletics, and almost none in academics, so what you get are teams that have a lot of athletically-gifted morons.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 5:07 pm

Mitsurugi CP wrote:
Actually, the Giants are probably one of the best teams in the NFC, with the Cowboys and the Packers. I got to see a recap of the game, and damn it was pretty sloppy, but that's generally how games played in the rain are. Had the weather been better, it would have been a blowout.

Seriously? Have you watched a Giants game yet?

They're lucky as hell and they're playing bad teams.

Tell the RDM how good they are after the Cowboys murder them in a week and change.

Bazz · Post by **Bazz** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 2:54 am

Mitsurugi CP wrote:
Bazz wrote:The feeling most people seem to have been left with is best described as "meh", and the opinion the "footballers" left behind is that they're a bunch of uncoordinated, ill educated, whingers.
That's unfortunate that the game was played so poorly, but you are largely right about the ill-educated part. A lot of American Football players and basketball players who make it to the NFL or NBA spend all of their time focused on athletics, and almost none in academics, so what you get are teams that have a lot of athletically-gifted morons.

Yeah, to be honest I suppose it's to be expected really, but I heard that they all had to go through college or something to get into the league. You'd think they'd at least be moderately well educated.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 12:52 pm

Some moreso that others. A lot of the time you can tell.

The dumb ones don't talk so much.