Another new arrival to the blog: Guest Articles!
Thought it'd be a good way to break up the monotone of my own writing style while providing a good insight to readers on life within the IAFL. Plan is to have notable IAFL players, coaches and alumni to chip in a few words in order to provide a glimpse into the world of the Irish American football scene. With any luck the football Gods may even shine down upon this petit corner of the globel hyper-highway and provide the odd change-of-pace-back guest to spice it up. Very hush hush for now though, just cross your e-fingers for me will you?
Anyway, since these segments hope to illuminate the glamour of the IAFL the first such guest writer is a rather apt individual. As the caption above suggests, he is a two time winner of the MVP award in Shamrock Bowls (2008/09), ladies and gentlemen, boy and girls, the inaugural 'Guest Article' guest writer: runningback for the University of Limerick Vikings, Adrian Garvey!
Atlantic Cup 2010
by Adrian Garvey
Adrian Garvey
The most memorable game for me would have to be the Atlantic Cup Final (western European club championship), it was the first time that we had made the competition and getting to the final was unbelievable.
One of the first things i remember from the game was the heat. It was maybe 20-25 degrees Celsius, which might not seem like much but when you take into account we were wearing a helmet and shoulder pads weighting 20lbs alone it amplified it ten fold. On top of that there may have been a water shortage that day from the event alone, nevermind from the guys battling it out on the gridiron.
The game started like any other and we had a great first drive that went down inside the Lelystad Commanders redzone but we came up short on a 4th down attempt. It went back and forth from there, each team taking turns at scoring.
It was a great experience to play a new team; we were so used to playing the teams in Ireland that we are on a first name basis with half the teams lining up against us. With only a few minutes left on the clock we had to make 80 yards and score to grab the win. Liam Ryan and Marc Ashworth the quarterback and wide receiver tandem on the team ran a trick play which came off and garnered a huge gain through the air. Liam passed the ball to Marc in the flats and Marc in turn threw the ball 50 odd yards down the field to our top receiver Brendan McCarthy.
Now with only seconds on the clock, and at this stage the entire team running on empty Liam (Ryan) comes into the huddle and calls it: run option to the left even with us being about 25 yards out at the time.
We run the play: Liam shovel passes the ball to me on the left. Running through would-be tacklers and reaching the ball out as far as I could I never stopped until I crashed out the back of the endzone and into the fence surrounding the field. The eruption from our sideline would make most Champions League finals seem quite tame in comparisson. We had done it.
First time in club history that the Vikings had won a European cup and the first time an Irish club had won the Atlantic cup. This game will always stay with me: it showed the commitment and sheer desire of the team to win.
American football is different to other sports in the sense that if one man doesn't do his job one of his teammates could end up getting hurt. As a result there is a lot of pressure to give 100% and to put that much trust into a group of people who have your well being in their hands, that bond is what makes us a very tight group to this day.
We win as one, we lose as one.
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