Saturday 2 February 2013

Prologue to History

After one of the Eagles numerous defeats over the past season, I wrote about how I was going to spend the off season researching and writing about the history of the NFL in the UK.  Well, since then I've got more and more interested in the project and have already started researching the topic and getting some ideas down.  In fact, I haven't got this caught up in my blog since my initial Search for a Team, there are a rich array of fascinating stories about American Football in this country and I've really enjoyed discovering them.

The history of the NFL in the UK has been written about before - there is the excellent Britball website, as well as numerous other articles that can be found with a quick trawl around the net, but I want to tell the whole story.  I want to chart all of the links between American Football and this country - going all the way back to very beginning, right through to the recent International Series games at Wembley.

History was never my strong point at school (my strong points were euchre and common room cricket!).  I didn't really care about how the Tudors lived, or the political situation in Rome two thousand years ago.  What made it particularly dull was the dry and matter of fact way in which the material was delivered.  A load of facts are all well and good, but I want something with a bit more character and humour.  

Clearly, this represents something of a challenge for me.  It's a bit more in depth then writing about why I hate the Steelers or why Sourdough Sam is the worst mascot in the NFL.  There's also the tricky task of adding some meat to the bones of some pretty vague and thin tales.  Events from recent years are relatively easy to cover, but the task of making a 1910 game between the crews of 2 US battleships sound interesting is all together more taxing.  

It's taken a while but, I've finally managed to cobble together some words that I'm happy with and seeing as the NFL season ends on Sunday I'm going to start to tell my story from next week.

As I've previously discussed, American Football's relationship with the UK can broadly be categorized as follows:

The Origins of the Sport - Like most US sports, American Football derives from an English sport  - in this case rugby.  How did the sport evolve from the time that William Webb Ellis supposedly pick up a ball during a game of football?

The Early Days - Before Channel 4 got involved in the early 80's, the NFL was a mystery to the vast majority of the UK.  However, there were a few connections, aside from the previously mentioned Smith.  I am also trying to track down a story that I'm sure I read in the guardian a while ago, it concerns a kicker from the UK who ended up in the NFL after a franchise decided to run kicking trials over here.  If anybody has a link to that story or more information on what happened then please can you let me know, as I seem to recall it was a great tale.

The 80's Boom - Everyone of a certain age (older than me I hasten to add) remember Channel 4's coverage of the NFL, it led to a massive growth of the NFL in the UK and exhibition games being played at Wembley stadium.  Ultimately, Channel 4's coverage was the catalyst for the League becoming what it has in this country.  They are plenty of interesting facts and anecdotes surrounding the sport and it's presence in the UK during this period.

The London Monarchs and the World League - With all due respect the likes of the London Blitz and co, it seems ludicrous to think that an American Football team from the UK played and Wembley stadium and regularly attracted crowds of other 40,000.  It was a weird time for the sport in the UK, highlighted by the fact that my geography teacher used to put on Monarchs videos when he had time to kill at the end of a lesson!


*  Finally, after a late nineties dip, we have the "Second Boom" that exists to this day and is underlined by the playing of regular season NFL games at Wembley.  I still get amazed when people complain about aspects of the International Series - Team x are crap, the queues at the Tailgate are too long, tickets are too expensive etc - we shouldn't ever get complacent about the NFL playing in this country.  It is an incredible privilege that the overwhelming majority of sports fans never experience.  It is also growing year upon year -the Tailgates, the Fan Rallies etc and next year we have 2 games to look forward to.  What's more, they are also events such as the Super Bash and the Thanksgiving Party that help to raise the profile of the sport here, as well as more and more games being televised.  It's a fantastic time to be a UK based fan of the NFL, but what does the future hold and how can the sport continue to grow?


So, next week I'll be starting off the story with the first part of how rugby made its way across the Atlantic and slowly morphed into American Football.  It'd be great if you could forward this on to friends and anyone you know who follows the NFL.  Also, if you have any stories from the early years of the NFL in the UK then please let me know.  Hope you enjoy it!