A couple of weekends ago I had, quite likely, my last organized American Football event. However, getting to play at all was a true blessing because all of the forces in the world were against it. First, Ireland has had more rain this year than they've had in a long time. There's flooding everywhere, and the pitch where we planned to have our games was no exception. 3 teams came from Dublin: Trinity, UCD, and DCU. The plan was to have a four man tournament, where we would play Trinity and the other two teams would play each other. Then the losers would play each other for third place, and the winners would play for the championship.
The games were to take place on the 20th and 21st of November. On the 19th I received a text message saying that the weather had caused a change of plans, and that the 20th would be a flag football tournament. Now most people might say "Hey, it's still football", but I was livid. Understand that when you've got all this tension built up about playing full contact, bone crunching, adrenaline fueling tackle football, flag football just doesn't cut it. Apparently the administration didn't want us to use the field AT ALL, but we managed to compromise and get the field for the length of "ONE FULL GAME".
The twist was, the first games would be played with NCAA overtime rules (basically whoever scores first and holds the other team wins). If we both scored (or didn't score) after two rounds, the game would be decided by a COIN TOSS.
Needless to say, I was once again, livid. I was expecting two full games, and now I was only getting a whack at one. Or so I thought...
The first 'game' we won no problem (or team is good, the best in fact). Now it was a waiting game. The second round of overtime matches went quickly, and then the third place qualifier. Trinity played UCD for third, and Trinity won. Finally, the moment I'd been waiting for arrives.
I'm on the kickoff team, and we're kicking first. I get to run down field and lay someone out right off the bat. One thing though, the field is like a slip-n-slide. Seriously, when you run water splashes everywhere, and when you try to stop it's like stopping on ice. So I run down field full boar, only to break down and go gliding on my ass full force just a hair past the ball carrier. Luckily, I popped right back up as someone else had him held up. It was too much to pass up and I leveled the guy while he was pinned up.
Well that felt good.
I played starting Wide Receiver, but there were a lot of us and they did a lot of rotating. It goes without saying we weren't doing a lot of passing either, so most of my enjoyment came in the form of blocking. My favorite play was the sweep to my side, in which I pulled off the corner in to the linebacker. If you don't know much about football, the linebacker is largely responsible for filling gaps and making tackles. When he sees the sweep coming he starts breaking off from the center of the field to line up an angle tackle. The greatest thing about this is that he's usually got his eyes on the runner... completely oblivious to the trap that's being set in his honor. When I pull off of the corner and come running directly at him, he's not looking at me until the last second. By this time I've built up enough speed to butt heads with a freight train and he's got nowhere to run. As he turns in grim realization of what's about to happen his eyes widen with terror. I can feel a grin forming on my face as I throw all of my weight into a colossal shove that sends him skidding across the ground wondering what just happened.
Obviously I take some satisfaction in football. So when the coach walks over at halftime I have a sinking feeling inside. At the half it's 22 - 0 Limerick (that's us), and so far we've injured 3 DCU players. The coach says he's sorry, that he knows we want to play but his team simply isn't ready. DCU forfeits at half.
It's nice to win, but I'd been looking forward to this day for 10 weeks, and somehow ONE HALF of a game just wasn't enough for me.
Unfortunately, I can't stay for the rest of the season either because: 1. I'm a senior and I need to be thinking about job searching and graduation, and 2. I have no money to stay here.
So I'm left with the memory of half a game, which I guess is better than nothing. I thoroughly enjoyed training too, so I guess I can't complain MUCH.
