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.