Apartment, Gym and Pre-game Spiel 4

I have been dealing with some computer problems and have been putting off wiping my hard drive until I got this post up and then it’s a fresh start with the computer. At least this time I got a chance to back everything up first and then go ahead with the wipe.

As previously mentioned I would put up some pictures of my apartment here in Monchengladbach so you can see what it looks like. I am very happy with the apartment; to be honest I was expecting much smaller so when I arrived and saw the size of this apartment I was happily surprised.

The first few weeks I was by myself so the apartment felt huge but once my roommate got here I didn’t feel like I was living in this huge loft. Ironically, the apartment proceeded to get even cozier for a few weeks while another import player had to live with us for a few weeks since his apartment wasn’t ready.

I went from the original feeling of having too much space to being three and feeling like we were always invading each other’s space. It actually reminded me of my first year outside of residence at McGill when we were three students living in a two bedroom apartment and used the closed living room as the third bedroom, that was something I didn’t want to do again so I am happy that lasted only a few weeks. It doesn’t help when every morning, the guy sleeping on the couch wakes you up by asking… I mean yelling: “You trying to get jacked today?”

Here are the pictures of the apartment (my room, the kitchen and living room) and the gym (the guy flexing in the back is our running back, or as we like to call him “Jacked Norris”):











The apartment has everything we need and even a nice balcony that we occasionally use to play cards outside or to store our garbage bags since we can’t figure out when garbage day is. We have asked people in the building and checked the website online but nothing seems to match up and no one seems sure when the garbage day is versus recycling or compost. We have resorted to just looking outside on the main street and trying to decipher what day it is or taking the trash to a dumpster nearby. Better than just letting it pile up for months; we heard that’s what the guys did last year since they couldn’t figure it out either.

Tomorrow we play against the Bonn Gamecocks; also another away game and we are hoping to continue the winning streak. Our head coach and some of the staff are calling out the starters because it takes us too long to get into a rhythm and we are letting teams hang around with us too long. We need to come out of the gate firing on all cylinders to make a statement and not give our opponents any hope in staying in the game.

I am off to visit some more family this weekend in southern Germany so I am looking forward to seeing my family’s old farm and the little village that I lived in.

Spiel 3

As you may have read on the twitter feed game three ended with another Mavericks victory 39-10. There are some positive and some negative points that have come out of the game; first and foremost we won and our team walked away healthy. We have lost a few players this year to injuries and seeing an injured teammate is never fun. Most of those injured players were present at this game and it was nice to see them walking the sideline and celebrating the victory with us after the game.

The victory was extra sweet for our players and staff because there is a huge rivalry between Monchengladbach and Köln (Cologne) so there was a little extra punch behind the game. Just to put it in perspective, some fans put up a sign calling out our team for having some paid players. This is a normal thing here in European football since most teams bring in some players from the USA, Canada and other parts of Europe to play for their team. There are rules protecting the number of import and non-import players on the field just like the CFL but this was just some fans trying to spice up the rivalry; below is a picture of the banner.



The glaring negative point that sticks out from this game as well as the game against Langenfeld is the penalties we have been taking as a team. I heard a statistic today that we had about 200 yards in penalties against Köln. Those penalties keep opponents drives alive, end our drives, give them better field position, make ours worse and they are demoralizing for our team and keep opponents hopes alive.

As football players we never want to get caught for a penalty so excuses to avoid the blame on penalties are common and numerous for example: it was the referees fault, the ball was already snapped, there was no whistle and so on but there is one thing that doesn’t lie and that’s the eye-in-the-sky (game film). We will go back review the game tape and hopefully rectify the problems and move on.

On a personal note, this was a breakout game for me; I had yet to really produce much of a game in my opinion since I had been in Germany and I was happy to finally deliver a much better performance. I had 6 receptions for 205 yards and 3 touchdowns.

Below are a few pictures from a few different websites. If you want to check some pictures from the two photographers websites here are their links.
- Daniel On Tour
- American Sports Info








A side-note/inside joke for those guys that know me from back at McGill; yes I was throwing and completing a pass after there was a botched snap on a point after attempt, so much for noodle arms. (We used to joke about my long “noodle-like” arms).

That’s it for now, my next post will have some pictures from my apartment here in Monchengladbach so you guys can see where I am living. Drop a comment or question below.

Neue Nachrichten und Pregame Spiel 3

Hi Everyone,

Sorry for not having put up any posts this week. I was visiting family in Frankfurt, as well as doing some sightseeing there. I also spent some time in Dusseldorf with some of my fellow “Amis”(Americans for the new readers) and some of the German players. I have started to outline a few more trips for my time in Europe so that I will be able to plan around some of my free time and visit some new places.

A new development that some of you may be aware of from reading the twitter feed was that I will also be posting parts of my blog on the Canada Football Chat website. Canada Football Chat has been growing exponentially since its creation in February 2010; the website’s objective has been to reunite all football related information in Canada in one location and allow all its users to be connected nationwide to all information related to football at all levels.

Tomorrow we play our third game of the season against the Cologne Falcons; it is another away game and this time we play on Field Turf. I have taken some heat and been on the receiving end of some jokes from friends here since I posted that blog entry talking about the different types of playing surfaces so all I will say is that I am happy to be playing on Field Turf and that is all.

I hope to have another update and some more posts for you to read by Tuesday that way the story can go on.

As usual feel free to post questions, comments or anything else that may be on your minds. Meanwhile here is a link to the Canada Football Chat website and it is also located in the sidebar section for links.

Spiel 2 and The night in "Dussel"

It has been a couple days since my last post, I am currently in Frankfurt visiting my aunt and my dad will be making a quick stopover on his way back to work. I have spent most of my time since the game travelling to Frankfurt, hanging out with my aunt or resting since I had a long night after the game.

As you may have read from the twitter feed in the sidebar; I chose to be the designated driver Saturday night since as a group of “Amis” we wanted to go out to Dusseldorf to celebrate with some of the German players from the team. As I mentioned before they don’t all live near Monchengladbach so it’s not always easy to get to hang out with some of them. I decided to drive the guys since I knew I had to be up early and figured it will save us all a little bit of money; little did I know it would turn into a mess.

So we all piled into one of our “Mav-mobiles” and drove into Dusseldorf to meet up with some of the guys in the Dusseldorfer Altstadt. Only problem was none of us really knew how to get there. Long story short after a few “detours”; we found a parking garage near the Altstadt and parked the car in there. I saw a sign that said the garage closes at 3am, probably mentioned it quickly but I don’t think anyone heard so off we were to party for a few hours.

With 3 am approaching we slowly started to wrap up the night (or so we thought) and headed back to the garage. We weren’t in any real hurry since some of the German guys said I must have misread the signs since usually the garages don’t close.

As we approached the garage, we all realized the entrance and exit had been closed off with giant metal gates. After cussing around for a few minutes trying to figure out a genius way to get to the car; we arrived at an executive decision that since two of the “Amis” had locked there keys in car when we parked it, that they would stay until 9am and drive the car back to Monchengladbach. The rest of us were going to walk to the train station and take the next train at 430am home.

We got lucky and called some friends that were out with us and they came and picked us up. You would think the drive would be easy going from there but instead the gas tank was already on empty so we needed to find a gas station pronto to fill up if not we would be pushing our way home. We then spent the next hour coasting through all the little villages on the way back to ‘Gladbach trying to find a gas station that would be open. We drove by I think 7 or 8 stations that were all closed, until the 8th or 9th was open. I have never been stranded in a car that ran out of gas but I was quite sure that Saturday night was going to be the first time.

I got home just past 5am and then had to pack up my stuff for the trip to Frankfurt. I climbed into bed around 6am and took a nap for about 3 hours.
Waking up following a game generally means sleeping in and sleeping off the bruises as well as the celebratory events of the night before. I got up and made it to the train station contrary to what my body and mind really wanted to do which was sleep for a few more hours. The ride to Frankfurt was easy and I was grateful that I reserved a seat on the long stretch of the train ride since it was a packed train and I was in no mood to be standing for that part of the trip.

Arriving in Frankfurt, I needed to transfer to a local regional train to make it to my aunt’s house, unfortunately in my zombie like state I boarded the right train but heading in the wrong direction. I didn’t realize it for a couple of stops and then had to get off and missed the train going back in the other direction so I had to wait on an empty platform for 30minutes without any other people around wondering how long I would be waiting to get back in the right direction.

After all that I made it to my aunts and took the rest of the day off so to speak.

Here is a quick overview of the second game as well as a couple pictures from the game.





This team was supposed to be one of the better opponents we will play as well as they were calling out our organization in some press releases so before the game even started there were already some “war of words” to build the anticipation of the game.

The game was a fairly close battle until late in the 3rd quarter when our offense continued scoring and our defense was making stop after stop. Final Score: 42-21

This game was more of a physical battle then the previous one and it also involved some cheap shots, which we were expecting with the way the game was going and the constant verbal jousting between both teams.

Personally, I didn’t have a statistically impressive game (3 catches for 22 yards, 1 TD) but I think I had an effect on how the defensive backfield was positioned to play our offense. I generally had two defensive backs playing a bracket over top of me allowing the closer defensive back to play any short routes aggressively knowing he has help over top.

They tried to blitz us a lot and our QB and running back both had success running for yards and TDs. Our running back is currently leading the league in quite a few categories so it will be interesting to see if teams will try to load the box and then hopefully that will allow me some more opportunities to make some plays outside; if not who cares as long as the wins keep going up on the board.

I think that’s all for now I am off to get some sightseeing done in Frankfurt as well as getting some shopping done for the boys back in ‘Gladbach trying to find some shoes to play on our Astroturf at the Hockeypark.

Let me know if you want more football details or anything else.

Die Feldtypen und Pregame 2

Tomorrow we travel to play our second regular season game, this week we play against the Langenfeld Longhorns. This will be our first road game so I am interested to see the condition of the other field as well as the venue to see how other teams run their game day.

Our home field is Astroturf and every other team in our conference plays on grass so this will be a little bit of switch but should be nice. I have been dealing with some shin splints as of late so the softer playing surface should help that. The grass will also slow the speed of the game so it will be another adjustment that will need to happen.

Most of my fellow American teammates played on grass surfaces back home so this will be familiar territory for them but for me it’s a little bit of a change. At McGill University, we have a Field Turf surface. It is in between Astroturf and grass; it is an artificial surface as well, but the “grass” or turf is longer than Astroturf and has a rubber filling to cushion the field and simulate the same type of traction that grass would provide). I have generally found that Field Turf is faster than grass but slower than Astroturf.

My favourite surface to play on is Field Turf and that was what most teams in the Quebec University Football League compete on. Depending which university we were playing against there were different generations of field turf since there have been advancements and changes in the development of Field Turf. Overall the different Field Turfs played at about the same speed with some slight differences; it generally had to do with the length of the turf and the filling that was used. Some fields had really long turf and it was much closer to grass and others had a middle length turf but with larger rubber fillings; therefore the game speed changed a little each week.

One thing that remains constant about Field Turf, is that it is impossible to get rid of all the little black rubber fillings from your equipment, shoes, gloves and so on. Even after my several moves in Montreal you could still find the little rubber pellets everywhere in my equipment and apartment. When you watch a football game and you see a player trying to pick out the grass from his helmet or equipment after diving for a ball or getting tackled it seems pretty easy, well imagine trying to pick out millions of little pieces rubber that also stick to your skin. It is almost impossible to do; the pellets get into your shoes, socks, t-shirts, everything, a little annoying but small price to pay for playing on the best surface in my opinion.

Our conference in Quebec had some grass fields but usually they turned into mud fields during the fall. In the five years that I played in the Quebec University Football League we generally had to travel at least once a year to the Eastern Township part of Quebec. Sherbrooke and Bishop’s Universities are located in the Eastern Townships area and I do not remember ever playing a game there without some rain. For that matter I don’t think I ever played either of those universities home or away when it wasn’t raining. I hated travelling to those fields because the weather was constantly changing during the game. I believe that Bishop’s University has now changed Coulter Field to Field Turf as well so no need to worry about the field condition getting worse as the season progressed.

Here are three pictures where football is being played against the elements: one is a catch in my last game against Sherbrooke University (one of the coldest games I ever played in, wet and freezing rain) and the other is a before and at the end of the 2008 Vanier Cup (unfortunately I never got to play in the National Championship Game so I took those as a spectator):





Looking ahead to tomorrow’s game I am excited to be facing a new organization, back home at McGill, we played in a small conference and we often had a good idea what to expect from our opponents. Aside from the weekly adjustments and change in personnel many of the programs presented the same type of systems and schemes every year so playing in a new league gives me another opportunity to see how different programs run and prepare their teams.

A new week brings forward a new challenge and I am excited to see what the Longhorns bring to the table. I want to improve from the mistakes I made in the game last week and secure another victory for the Mavericks. We have been told that the Longhorns are talking up a storm and really want to get after us since we made a big statement against Madgeburg last week. Lets see what happens.

Das Auto

About a day or two before leaving for training camp, our sports director took me to pick up one of the team cars. As you can imagine I was excited to get a car because this meant I would be able to get around Germany. There was one problem, I don’t know how to drive standard, well didn’t know how to drive standard.

Now some of you might know that most vehicles in Europe are standard transmission or manual shift; whichever you prefer. Unfortunately for me I had never had the chance to learn how to drive standard, so along with figuring out where I was, I would also be learning to drive again so to speak. We never had a standard vehicle at home and this would be a new challenge for me to learn while I was here; it was either learn, or walk.

Our sports director asked me if I wanted to drive the car off the lot from the sponsoring dealership but I told him that it probably was not a good idea and that he should take the first leg of this voyage.

Here is a picture of the Honda Jazz.



After leaving the dealership, it was my turn to take the brand new Honda Jazz for rip. Well like I said this happened a few days before training camp so as previously mentioned this was when my coach took me around to the different locations in Monchengladbach that I would be going too like the Gym, grocery store and so on.

Instead of getting to used to starting, stopping and shifting in a parking lot as I had hoped, I was put behind the wheel on a street with not much traffic. We only stayed there for the time it took for me to get the vehicle into second gear and we were off to explore Monchengladbach with my shaky shifting. Fortunately for me Monchengladbach is a pretty flat town and not too many hills so I didn’t need to worry about the roll back too much. I did pretty good right from the start; that’s not to say that driving with me didn’t cause whiplash but at least I didn’t stall the car every time I needed to start from standstill. I seemed to be able to get the car going with some choppiness; well heavy choppiness, but than I was fine once in second gear. I would get into trouble when I would stall; it seemed every time stalled, I would stall for three or four times and then get going; suffice to say the vehicles behind me really enjoyed having me on the road.

The first couple of weeks of driving were a little choppy but I got a hang of it and now I can proudly say I know how to drive standard and not give whiplash to my passengers. I have already driven in a few traffic jams, big city traffic (Frankfurt and Dusseldorf) as well as soccer fans driving to the game (they didn’t have much patience good thing I was already pretty comfortable by then).

Quick side note Monchengladbach is home to one of Germany’s premier soccer clubs, which plays in the Bundesliga (#1 league); they are called Borussia Monchengladbach and here is a picture of their stadium that I took from the roof of the Hockeypark; the stadium hold about 50 to 60,000 people(so I have been told). I am hoping to get to see a game before I leave 'Gladbach; soccer was the first sport that I played competitively so seeing a game would be really cool. As well a link to their team website.



After having that Honda Jazz for a few weeks, and some of the new imports arriving we went to return the car and receive our three new red Hyundai I20’s with team decals on them. We went for a quick photo shoot with the cars so they could write a press release about the dealership’s sponsorship of the team.

Here are some of those pictures.




I am happy that I was presented with the opportunity to learn how to drive standard since it can’t hurt to know how to drive that kind of vehicle. I want to thank my coach/driving instructor for putting me in the hot seat and dealing with all the “friendly” honking cars while I stalled. I think he just permanently had his hand up waving sorry to everyone around us. He told me that it’s a normal thing for him to go through because every time a new group of players from North America come over there are always a few that don’t know how to drive stick.

Drop me a line if you got any personal driving horror stories, or any questions about anything I mentioned or forgot to mention.

Spiel 1

Game number 1 is under the belt and we did a pretty good job taking care of our opponent; the Magdeburg Virgin Guards. The final score of the game was 48-7 for the Monchengladbach Mavericks. We play them later this year so they will want some revenge.

We played a good game overall; the defense caused lots of turnovers and the offense took care of the ball and scored lots of points so that is always good.

Unfortunately we had a lot penalties some holding, some pass interference, block in the back and so on; the penalties happened on all sides of the ball; offense, defense and special teams. The game is refereed a little differently here and much more to the specifics of the rulebook. The referees seem to call the game to the "T" of the rules and not allow some physical discrepancies. Personally for me and some of the other players (German and Imports alike) needed to adjust to the reffing style, it was quite confusing because I have been taught and played a certain way for so long but we overcame the problems and will adjust for further games.

I personally had an OK game; I scored one touchdown but had a bad drop that I should have caught. The dropped pass could have turned into a long gain or maybe a touchdown as well as having converted the third down into a first down. I turned to run up field early and took my eyes off the ball as it was coming into my hands and dropped it; rookie mistake but I took care of it later and scored a long touchdown.

Overall can't complain we won and won big; our running back had a great game, I think he had four touchdowns. As we like to say; "He tore the field up!" Most of our opponents were at the game to watch since this was our first regular season game and I think we sent a message.

Here are a few pictures of me from the game; some are on kick/punt return or on offense as well as a picture of a team celebration for the fans at the end of the game. They were taken by one of the photographers that is at all our team events attached is a link to one of his websites.

End of Training Camp

As previously mentioned, the last day of training camp started off a little later since we had our team barbecue the night before. We slept in and then had to pack everything up to clear out from the hostel and head to the Hockeypark for our team scrimmage.

The scrimmage was a “controlled” offense versus defense scrimmage (a game simulation); what that means is that there were no referees but the coaches controlled the scrimmage by whistles and also had the opportunity to talk to the players in between plays to correct things if necessary. The practice consisted of a warm-up, and an individual period (when the team divides by position with their positional coach to go over specific positional drills) then the team proceeded to play 48 plays.

The scrimmage was broken into four quarters and each “quarter” was at different locations on the field, using down and distance at each location just no punting or special teams. The offense would start 12 plays on their own 20-yard line; the second group of twelve plays was on the offense’s own 45-yard line, the third on the defense’s own 45-yard line and the fourth grouping would be on the defense’s 20-yard line and I think we may have done a few on the actual goal line as well.

Training camps are an all-consuming ordeal; from sunrise to sunset; it is football all the time and no time for you to take a moment and breathe. It is a very exhausting undertaking, not only for the players but also for all involved; from the coaches, to the support staff (equipment, video, food), the physiotherapy and doctors staff and so on. Once the practice was completed; I was excited to grab my things and head back to the apartment and get a chance to relax.

I want to reflect a little bit about the concept of training camp.

Training camps are a part of football; but most players have mixed feelings about them. We all know and understand how crucial it is to develop chemistry between players and prepare and evaluate players for the new season but there are always some downsides as well.

Personally, I don’t mind training camp; playing on offense it is very important to develop chemistry with your quarterback to understand how he thinks and reacts in certain situations. It is very important to be on the same page and the best way to do that is repetition and believe me there is a lot during training camp.

Some people could counter that point of view by saying that would only be the case if you were playing with many new players. They would say that if you have played with the same quarterback for many years that wouldn’t be as necessary since you already know each other’s tendencies.

I use the example of quarterback and offense because it is the most common one for me but I believe the same tendencies and concepts apply for defense as well.

When I think of training camp the only concern that I always have is the fear of injury.

You may ask why am I only concerned about injury during training camp and am not as worried about it otherwise. I am not as concerned about injury at other times during the season because I play football and when you play a contact sport, injuries will occur.

In training camp however, in my experience, is when you see the most players succumb to injury. It is a terrible thing to see a teammate get hurt by a teammate or just get hurt in a non-game situation. Training camp is a time period with such high intensity; injuries are almost unavoidable.

Every year that I have been in training camp there always seem to be a player get hurt and miss a significant amount of playing time and that is always a depressing thing to see. Football is played for about 4 or 5 months a year and the rest of the time is training; the preparation lasts for the rest of year. When you see a teammate get hurt; you feel for him; you know the long, tough hours he spent preparing to be ready for game day.

Another side affect that is also very common during training camp is the development of nagging injuries. These injuries aren’t bad enough to take you out of the game or practice but they are still there and a pain to deal with since you never feel like you can compete at your best potential. I know that more than once I have dealt with one of these injuries and they are no fun but a part of the game.

Many times these injuries develop or begin to appear during training camp because of the high number of practices (usually twice a day, for two hours or more) and the amount of running that takes place during camp. The toll that these hours of high intense practice place on your body often result in the development of tendonitis, shin splints or muscle strains that often will remain until the end of the season.

There are many more pros and cons involved with training camp that I could go into but I wanted to highlight a few and try to get your opinions. I have had the pros and cons discussion with coaches, players (veterans and rookies), therapists, and doctors, all in an effort to gauge a general consensus about training camp. What is your opinion? Should practices be shorter? Longer? Less intense? Less contact drills? Should there be more involvement with the therapy staff? How do you think it differs in other sports? Let me know what you think.

New Team Website

The Monchengladbach Mavericks launched there new website. Click here or in the sidebar to check it out.

No post today but here are the two pictures from the website. My head shot and the team picture.

Die Verschiedene typen des Fussball

At this point I will talk a little bit more about football in Canada, in the United States and in Germany/Europe. As some of you may already know football or as it is referred to here; “Amerikanishes Football” has two general set of rules; the Canadian version and the American version.

First a little history; football is a game that was born from variations of rugby and it can be dated back to the 19th century. There are several places where football was being played with a variety of rules but the first recorded match between two universities or organizations was on May 14th, 1874, between Harvard and McGill University. This game led to the spreading of organized football in the Ivy League and if you follow the yellow brick road you get to where you now have football played on five continents around the World.

Most of you reading this know of the two versions of “gridiron football” (that’s what they call it in Australia), being played in North America but below are some of the variations to understand the differences between the games.

The Canadian version of the game has:
- 12 players on the field
- 110-yard field
- 20-yard end zones
- 65-yard width of the field
- Field goal posts at the front of the end zone
- Players in backfield are allowed forward-motion to the line of scrimmage
- Three “downs” or attempts to advance the ball 10 yards
- A five-yard halo to protect the punt returner

The American version of the game has:
- 11 players on the field
- 100-yard field
- 10-yard end zones
- 54-yard width of the field
- Field goal posts at the back of the end zone
- Players are not allowed forward motion to the line of scrimmage
- Four “downs” to advance the ball 10 yards
- Fair catch rule to protect punt returner

Those are the big differences between the Canadian and the American versions of football. There are other differences in the rules but overall the game is quite similar. In Europe, they play the American version of the game and the leagues follow the same rules that are played in the NCAA the previous season (it takes about that long for them to translate the rule changes and put them into effect.)

My entire football experience leading up to coming to Germany was in the Canadian version of football; this is a little unusual because even in Canada several leagues still play with the American version of the game. I never had the opportunity to play that version before coming to Germany because my high school league and the Canadian Interuniversity Sport league both play the Canadian version. Therefore when I showed up here I needed to get used to the changes quickly; it wasn’t too difficult since I already knew the rules and just had to get used to the differences.

Another big change that I had to undergo when I got here was the switch from offense, which I had played regularly for the last 5 years, to playing defense. I had played receiver at McGill University but also had some background playing safety and the Mavericks had decided that they needed help with their defensive secondary since they were a little short-handed until the rest of the imports arrived.

After those first few weeks on defense (including training camp), I was allowed to switch back to offense where I was more comfortable. The change wasn’t quite as smooth as I expected, but since I had been playing in a specific offense for so long and was used to a certain way of calling plays, formations and positions it took me a few practices to get used to the new method. I think one of the other differences was since I didn’t get to participate on offense during training camp I had a larger package to learn all at once. Overall, it went fairly smoothly but it just took a little longer than I expected and I don’t doubt that the switch from the Canadian football to the American version of the game contributed to this delay a little bit.


We are now in the preparation phase for our first regular season game. On Sunday May 9th, at 3pm (Central European Time), we play against the Magdeburg Virgin Guards; they have already played a regular season game so they have those first game kinks out of the way but we will be ready and hopefully start the season off right with our first victory on our home field.

The next few posts will most likely jump around between what I was doing for the first few weeks as well as keeping you updated with the football games that are happening at the present moment. Let me know if you want to hear about something specific.

Das Trainingslager

The departure for training camp was a little bizarre for me since I was so new to this place and just getting adjusted to my surroundings in Monchengladbach. I knew that on a daily basis I would be back at the Hockeypark but other than that didn’t really know where I was going to be. I had no idea where this hostel was and what direction we were heading. Realistically that’s not a big deal but generally these are things I am used to knowing; at least having an idea where I was going to be so I had to completely let go of control and go along for the ride.

The hostel was located in area not far from Monchengladbach called Bruggen. Here is a link to the hostel so you can check it out; unfortunately I forgot to take many pictures but I did manage one picture of my room.




The next four days were spent completely immersed in football.

Every day we would wake-up at 7am for a team stretch outside, go inside for a special teams meeting, get maybe 30 minutes of extra time to do whatever (sleep usually), then breakfast and then another 45 minutes to relax (pre-practice power nap) and then board the bus for the 30 minute ride to the Hockeypark. Once at the field, we had a two-hour practice and then time for a shower and boarded the bus to go back to the hostel for lunch. After lunch we had unit meetings and time for a nap or physiotherapy for about an hour or so. We would then board the bus again and return to the field for our second practice of the day. After practice, we travelled back to the hostel and ate dinner followed by meetings and practice film analysis. We were in meetings until about 10:30pm. At this point, you had time for more physiotherapy, hanging out or what most of the guys did… back to bed before the cycle started over again.

This was our schedule for three days and then on the final night, we had a team barbecue, with steaks, salads and beer. Yeah that’s right beer! This was a surprise to me as well since I would have expected the barbecue to be after the offense versus defense team scrimmage the following day. This is not to say that the team got really drunk but it was just a casual beer or two but this was something new I had never experienced during a training camp. I had a coach back in Canada that once told the team I was playing on that “one or two beers are ok, but after that you are abusing your temple!” I guess they take that statement seriously in Germany. It was a new experience to have a beer during training camp and it may have been one of the best tasting beers I had in a long time; may have had something to do with the context. The last day of camp we were allowed to sleep for a couple extra hours and then we cleared out of the hostel and headed to the field to have our scrimmage; the culmination of training camp.