Good morning planet Earth.
With the first post of the 2011 'Hard Knocks For The Hard Of Hearing' blog, the author selects you, the reader, from wherever you are. Yes, this is an American football related blog folks and you have just been drafted to it. My heartfelt congratulations to you dear reader.
Anyway, I suppose I should start with how I got to this point and how the blog came to be. There's a lot to cover but it's the first post so we're all playing catch up, the rest won't be as long-winded, don't worry. So without any further pomp or ado, here you have it:
My name is Ross McCooey, a born and raised Irishman. I discovered American football some years ago back home in Dublin, Ireland and after getting bored with rugby and karate and anything else I tried I turned to the gridiron. Six fantastic years as a linebacker with the Dublin Rebels later and here I find myself sitting in Berlin with the Berlin Rebels, go figure!
The six years I spent with the Dublin Rebels were through college and some rather unsatisfying jobs, but football was always there to relieve study stress or work anxiety. I lived and breathed Rebels football. I played linebacker primarily but one season I lined up at 10 different positions: all across the OL, fullback, runningback, tight end, and even split out wide as a WR...no kidding (granted it was to block but it still counts)! From the moment I arrived at the rookie meeting I could tell that bunch of raggamuffins would provide a suitable theatre for my pent up sporting exploits.
Six years there covered a lot of achievement; three Shamrock Bowl titles (Irish championships fyi), one of which they decided to name me as MVP for, two gut-wrenching lost finals, and an appearance at the Atlantic cup. Oh, and the only two recorded perfect seasons in Irish American Football League (IAFL) history. A lot accomplished looking at it in a few lines.
After last year's perfect season and after talking to some of the guys on the team it dawned on me: I'm 24 and in an office job I can't stand that if I'm not careful will suck me in for my entire life. A jailbreak screen was called. Plan was to get onto europlayers.com and see if I can get out of Ireland and see how far I can climb in football while I still can.
Plenty of interest in my services which was rather gratifying to be honest. Talked to teams about finding the best possible fit for me and my future plans and goals. To be honest I figured I wanted to go to Germany to play in what is regarded as the most competitive league available in Europe, but GFL1 didn't even register on my scope. That was until the Plattling Black Hawks of GFL1 South came calling. I won't bore you with any details but suffice to say it fell through at the last minute, crushing my newly sprouted visions of GFL1 glory. C'est la vie, n'est ce pas?
I wasn't too worried though to be honest; having gauged interest (with a little help from a fairy godfather) I knew I'd find a higher level of play that could handle me. The Berlin Rebels were just that. A former teammate from Dublin was now coaching the DL for the German chapter of the men in black and that with the prospect of living in Berlin to play in GFL2 was a good sounding deal to me.
Thanks to the debacle with previous plans I had unfortunately missed some games by the time I arrived but I was eager to get stuck in against the league leaders Hamburg. I must tell you that my pre-game nerves were off the chart, a lot was riding on my performance. Now, the sharper reader may have figured this out already but I managed to play well enough to stick around. Two more games under my belt against Magdeburg and Cologne and I've handled myself reasonably well I'd say. Critiquing myself I would say I dipped after the high of the first game but brought it back a bit in the third.
However, the big kahuna is coming: July 30th against Lubeck. Not only is it huge because of playoff implications but there are also five former Dublin Rebels participating in the game. In fact, doing a preview of the importance of this game for europlayers.com ( http://www.europlayers.com/News.aspx?NewsId=417 ) brought about the inception of this blog. As I wrote the closing paragraph of that piece the significance of what's at stake set home; no Irish player has played at GFL1 to date.
Having come so close with Plattling I may have been reeling, I won't lie, but when life hands you lemons...and so on. It's a huge personal goal for me to be the first Irishman to play in GFL1 and this blog will chart my, and the Berlin Rebels', battle to go from GFL2 to promotion through the second half of the season. Hopefully you'll find it compelling, exciting, and at times, humorous.
Until the next installment; you stay classy planet Earth.
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