Spiel 6 Lubeck

Second post in a week! Alright I know its been a while since that has happened but trying to get back on track with my posting as well as getting some organizing done for my upcoming break here in July. I am going to try and travel around Spain, Portugal, France, Greece and maybe other places as well; we will see how much can be done in that short time.

As you may have read on the twitter updates we won our game against Lubeck. This game was our first game at home since the home opener 5 weeks ago, it was a nice change to not have to get on a bus and ride to our game. When I woke up in the morning and saw the rain I figured we would be playing in a wet game but an hour later or so the rain stopped and by the time of kickoff at 7pm, the field was dry and we were ready to go.

The lead-up to this game was a little interesting and unusual because of Ty’s injury he was unable to play and I was brought back to the defensive side of the ball to play safety. I was a little disappointed at first to have to switch back to defense because I am an offensive player and much rather enjoy beating the defender in front of me then having to stop offensive players. Surprisingly I really enjoyed my time on defense this week and also made a few tackles 3 solo and 1 assisted, unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of me making those tackles so you will just have to take my word for it.

All week I was taking repetitions on both sides of the ball hoping to be able to play offense as long as I wasn’t too tired to play defense. I didn’t know how realistic this goal would be since I am also on a few special teams so it was going to be a game time decision and talk about it on the sideline throughout the game to see how much offense I would be able to play. I knew if it was going to be as hot as the previous week it would be a lot harder but since it was an evening game and it rained earlier in the day I wasn’t as tired and was able to play most of the game both ways which was really exciting.

Here are a couple pictures from the game.





On offense I had a decent game, 4 catches for 87 yards and a touchdown. The stereotype associated with a lot of wide receivers is that of the showman and many like to celebrate a touchdown with a “dance”, but the people that know me from back in Montreal and university football know I don’t really do touchdown dances. Those that know me from high school well, they might think differently and say that I did like to celebrate when I got to the end zone or sometimes even on the way to the end zone.

I don’t really consider myself one of those receivers that do touchdown dances or celebrations but I will dabble in celebrations from time to time. During warm-up for this game, I was feeling very excited and was joking around singing/dancing as I was handing the ball to our offensive coordinator after each of my routes/catches I was joking around that if I scored a touchdown in the game I would do the electric slide in the end zone. Well, I caught a short pass and ran in for the touchdown but on the way I was staring at the field goal posts and instead of doing the electric slide; I dunked the football over the upright.



I have never been penalized for a celebration and didn’t want it to start against Lubeck, so instead of throwing it down really hard I made sure to get it over the upright and pick it up and hand it to the referee as quickly as possible. I think that generally referees will let some things go as long as it is done quickly, they don’t have to wait or chase for the ball and obviously isn't disrespectful to the other team (the respect aspect is open to discussion since some people believe any celebration is disrespectful and others don’t think celebrating is disrespectful, I am somewhere in between and think it is a situational dilemma).

Enough from me; let me know your favourite touchdown dance, if you agree or disagree with celebrations, are they part of the football? Why is it ok in other sports? Or any other comments.

Back On Track

After about two weeks off writing because my computer essentially crashed I have finally reloaded my operating system and can return to posting regularly.

In the past couple weeks, we have played two games and won both of them. The game against Bonn was a pretty easy game and we handled that one without any real difficulty. The second game and most recent was our final game against the Magdeburg Virgin Guards.

After the game against Bonn, I spent three days in Freiburg, Germany visiting my family there and getting the chance to visit the little village (Grafenhausen) that I spent two years living in when I was younger. I got the chance to visit the old farm that my family used to own and where my mom and her siblings grew up. The new owners have been restoring the property and in the short time that they have owned the property, the family living there has done an impressive job rebuilding/remodeling the property since it was basically unlivable when we sold it.

I also got the chance to go to France (which is just across the Rhein river near Grafenhausen) and eat a traditional food called Flammenkuchen. Flammenkuchen is similar to pizza, thinner dough and no tomato sauce; it can be prepared as dessert or main course, we had both. Just like pizza; flammenkuchen have many different types; we had some with onions and “speck”(smoked bacon), some with cheese and some with a combination of both. The dessert version is also quite tasty; it has “flambéed” apples with sugar on top of the dough. Here are a few pictures from that weekend.









In our first meeting versus Magdeburg, we beat them pretty soundly so we were hoping to do the same this time; the difference is that Magdeburg is 6 hours away and we needed to travel there the morning of the game. To the boys back at McGill, try to think the road trip back home from the East coast games on the bus but instead we stopped halfway and played a game, it was awful. We left at 6am from the Hockeypark and we stopped twice, once to pick up players that live on the way and the second time for a pregame walkthrough and a lunch prepared by Petra or as we imports call her “mom”.

When we arrived in Magdeburg it was about 30 degrees Celsius, you might think great, that is beautiful sunshine and wonderful conditions to play a football game but it was too hot. After a long bus ride, your legs are cramped and far from the best condition to be playing a football game, the sun only makes it worse by making it harder to stay hydrated and easier to cramp up. Many players and I were up on the field earlier/longer than usual to try and loosen our legs and get ready for the game.

We all did a good job getting ready since we took a commanding lead into half time. I obviously can’t speak for everyone but halftime was the worse thing possible for my legs. Sitting down and taking a break for a few minutes made the second half unbelievably hard for me to get my legs going again. I think the toll of the bus ride and the heat made the second half much harder for us as a team and we didn’t play as well and it became a game. Magdeburg came back and a couple of times were within striking distance; the game ended 37-29 Mavericks. It was a good character win for our team to remain undefeated as well as winning our fourth consecutive win on the road. Here are some pictures from our games against Bonn (baby blue) and Magdeburg (green/red).









As previously mentioned Magdeburg is 6 hours away from Monchengladbach, the bus ride took us from the Western border of Germany to the Eastern one. Berlin was only an hour and a half from Magdeburg so we decided as “Amis” that we would take a car with us to Magdeburg and then drive after the game to Berlin to spend a couple days there visiting the sights and enjoying the nightlife. We were supposed to be four players spending a few days in Berlin but Ty one of our Corners strained his MCL in the game and had to go back to ‘Gladbach to get evaluated by the doctors.

Since Ty had to go back to “Gladbach”, three of us decided to go and visit the sights. Berlin is a huge city with many things to see and do but we were only there for a day and half. We got the opportunity to see many of the big tourist sights such as Checkpoint Charlie and the Berlin Wall as well as the Brandenburger Gate but there were also many more that we didn’t get to see. Berlin has so many sights to see that we clearly didn’t have enough time to see everything but we accomplished a lot in our time there and enjoyed our time in Berlin. Below are some pictures from our time in Berlin.












Send me an email, post a comment or ask me question if I missed anything.

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.