Gutted

It’s a bit of a shitter when you sit up until gone 3am and your team end up losing.

For those of you who can’t stand American Football – I advise you to skip this blog posting and come back tomorrow, coz this is all gonna be about the SuperBowl.

First of all, I’m pleased for Andy Reid, the coach of the Kansas City Chiefs. He is, by all accounts, one of the nicest people in the world of sports and this Big Win has been a long time coming. But I have to say that the 49ers kind of handed it to them, rather than lost it to them. I’m not even sure what happened in the 4^th Quarter, but 90% of the San Francisco personnel seemed to forget how to play as a team, and the other 10% seemed to think the match was already won, and stopped concentrating. The MVP voters say that Patrick Mahomes woke up and took the game on; I would say the 49ers went to sleep and gave him countless chances.

Penalties killed us; a couple of them dubious. Did George Kittle really do anything wrong when pulling in that monster throw from Garoppolo just before half-time? That catch had set us up for a chance to score before the interval, and in the end it was ruled out because he hit the defender with a straight arm. A simple bending of the elbow could have won us the game!

If that one was a bit questionable, the Pass Interference by Tarvarius Moore on Kelse towards the end of the game was just unfathomable. I’ve never played the game and I don’t understand all the intricacies of the rules, but even I know that YOU CAN’T JUMP INTO A RECEIVER WHEN HE’S ABOUT TO CATCH THE BALL! All Moore had to do was turn around, face the ball, jump up to block Kelse’s view and let the ball hit the floor. But he didn’t. He locked his eyes on Travis Kelse and then clumsily bundled into him.

Everyone was starting to panic, and I think that was generated from the sidelines, as much as anywhere else. If your management are looking edgy and making unexpected decisions, surely it’s going to throw you off your own game as a player, and lead you to make strange on-field choices yourself?

I don’t know, I’m just speculating. My greatest sporting achievement is a 25-metre swimming certificate, so who am I to pass judgement on professional athletes?

It just seemed to me that the wheels well and truly came off the machine. We stopped doing the things that had got us to the SuperBowl and then panicked when the Chiefs got into gear. THEY played EXACTLY the way they played all post-season, we had a complete brainfart and started trying to be clever, or different. I guess strange things happen under enormous pressure, and people start to break down and make mistakes. Sadly, this has happened to Kyle Shanahan (our head coach) before (see SuperBowl LI) and it highlights what I think was the deciding factor in the whole game – the Coaches. Down 20-10 with not long left, Andy Reid looked calm and confident and zoned into his tactics. Leading with less than a quarter to go, and having been pretty dominant for most of the half, Kyle Shanahan looked rushed and unready and seemed to shit himself and lose his rag.

Maybe I’m writing this at the wrong time. It’s still very raw and I’m still very bitter, and later on I might look back with more pride and more happiness, but I only got 2 hours sleep and right now I feel very, very flat and very, very disappointed.

At least I predicted the winning team correctly. I’ve never been less happy to get something right, but at least I have a slight positive from the evening.

RC 3-2-20