Yesterday I attended my first ever proper NFL game.
Wow.
Not sure where to start, or what to say.
You probably know that I’m not exactly a practising
sportsman myself. I’m also not a great one for watching sports on television,
and I certainly have never felt the urge to travel to a stadium, pay money to
get in, and watch it ‘in the flesh.’ In fact, the thought of being in a crowded
public place surrounded by low-intellect morons who are screaming abuse at each
other while indulging in their tribalistic urges fills me with repulsion.
But yesterday, I fought through all that, and sat in
the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for five hours, thoroughly enjoying myself and
enjoying my fellow man.
Wow.
This all came about because Ted’s family, who are
all sporting mad, seem determined to somehow convince me that the best way to
use money that you’ve earned is to blow it on overpriced tickets to watch
overpaid athletes at overpublicised events. They think I am missing something
from my life, and that my reluctance to find sport ‘exciting’ is simply down to
a lack of experience, rather than a reasoned decision. They pester me
constantly about joining them at everything from The Highland Games to Mud
Wrestling at their local pub, and even the World Bog-Snorkelling Championships.
(which I assure you is a real thing, and I assure you has been attended by at
least one of Ted’s offspring.)
So, anyway, knowing of my love for the NFL they
bought me a ticket without giving me a chance to say ‘no’ and then made sure
that Philippa kept the weekend free so I wouldn’t have any excuses not to go.
I have to say, my long-seated reservations – of all
kinds – were unfounded, and I am SO GLAD that I managed to battle through my
own deep-seated determination never to do anything different and went along.
The main plus point for me was the atmosphere. This
wasn’t a ‘one team versus another,’ them-and-us, battle lines drawn in the sand
and knuckledusters on affair, this was a celebration of a sport that most of us
in Europe never get a chance to see live. So the Raiders fan to my right didn’t
attempt to knife me, or convert me, or spit on me, or automatically hate me
because I support a different Californian team to him, he just embraced me as
another fan and talked to me like a brother.
In front of us were four actual Tampa Bay
Buccaneers fans. I mean actual in that they are residents of Florida, season
ticket holders at their home stadium, and had travelled over together
especially for the game this weekend. I’d read rumours and reports that a lot
of fans in the US hate the International games, as they only get 8 home games a
year as it is, and so having one of them taking place in the UK means they have
to schlepp across the Atlantic at their own added expense, or miss out on the
game altogether. But the guys I spoke to were loving it. They knew well in
advance of the season starting that this was on their schedule, and they saw it
as a once-in-a-lifetime excuse for an opportunity and chose to embrace it
fully. God knows what they’d spent between them, but I don’t think any of them
regretted it.
I think the only team I didn’t see represented in
shirt form was the Cleveland Browns, which shouldn’t be surprising as they’ve
been dogshit bad for a decade.
It was quite a good game, as well. Not, apparently,
up to the excitement of last week’s Raiders/Bears showdown (several people I
spoke to attended both games) but there was plenty of action, plenty of points,
and plenty of interceptions, so my attention was rapt throughout. It may have
been the pricey lager I drank during the half-time interval, but I was
positively beaming by the middle of the third quarter and, despite my hatred of
these things, was shouting along with the rest of them and indulging in a few
of the chants. The stadium deserves a mention, too. Obviously I know very
little of sports arenas, and if you’d shown me a picture of the place a week
ago I wouldn’t know whether it was Wembley, Twickenham or the San Siro (I just
had to look those up online) but it’s certainly an impressive place. Lots and
lots of people in there, and yet it felt quite cosy, while being spacious
enough for all. Quite a trick really. Also, we literally had the cheapest seats
in the whole building – we were stuck off in one corner right in the back row –
and yet our view of the whole pitch was sufficient that we all kept up to date
with everything. If you did happen to glance away and miss something, it all
gets a repeat showing on four big screens that are suspended from the roof,
each of which is bigger than the village I was born in.
It took a while to get out, and get away, but I
wasn’t driving so I didn’t care. The journey home flew by, and it was just
lovely to be talking about ‘American Football’ with people who understood what
I was talking about, rather than just saying ‘isn’t that a bit like rugby?’ or
‘It’s all a bit complicated for me.’ Terms like Pass Interference, Yards After
The Catch and Intentional Grounding do take a while to get the hang of, but
once you know it, you love it, and the more you learn the better it gets, and
it was so nice to be spending time with people who got it. The suggestion has
already been made that this becomes an annual event, and I would happily have
handed over my money there and then if tickets were already available.
And then, to top it all off, I was home in time to
see the 49ers win AGAIN, this time against last year’s Conference Champions,
the LA Rams. We are now, for the first time in 30 years, unbeaten in our first
five games of a season.
Good, good times.
I can’t be bothered to check, but I have a suspicion
this may now be the longest blog posting I’ve ever written.
Rory breaking a 10-year-old record by writing lots
of words about SPORT???
Wow.
RC 14-10-19
