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.