05.10.05

Planes Trains and Automobiles… Oh and some football.

Posted in Canada, Sport at 4:04 pm by AB

After umpiring the Grand Final here between Seattle and Burnaby, i needed some more football. The Vancouver Cougars had been invited at the last minute (four weeks prior) to play at the US National Football Tournament in Milwaukee. I decided that it could be fun to travel down there and do some umpiring. So i had made arrangements to travel with the Vancouver team to Milwaukee. However as the day drew closer the Vancouver Boys numbers were not looking to great so there focus changed to an attempt to get me to play. The last time i played i was about 16/17, apart from one or two friendlys between the Field Umpires and Boundary Umpires back in Canberra. So naturally i was somewhat heistant. As the trip would pan out the boys would have ample opportunity to convince me to pull on the boots.

It is important to point out from the football club’s point of view, that the actual weekend was a difficult organisational process. They did not get official confirmation of our attendance until 4 weeks prior to the event. First of all the Club had to find a travel schedule with enought tickets and at a price to suit a budget. Thus the first problem was solved by Catching a coach service from Vancouver from Seattle Airport on Friday evening, taking the redeye from Seattle to Chicago and then transferring to Milwaukee arriving at 7:40am Saturday.

So after meeting at a Irish pub in downtown Vancouver the trip had begun. The bus left at 6pm with a scheduled arrival at Seattle Airport at 10:30pm allowing enough time to catch the 11:55 red eye to Chicago. So at 6 as we rolled out of town spirits were high and everyone was getting excited about playing at the US Nationals.

Just before the Canadian/US Border we picked up the coach picked up its final passenger for the run down to Seattle. The Border crossing seemed to be going smoothly with no problems until we noticed that the guy that had got on last had been pulled aside by the US officials. However the US officials didn’t process him further until they had processed everyone else including another coach that had arrived just after us. According to the bus driver he is not allowed to leave until everyone is processed or the US officals have decided to detain people. Eventually they let the young guy with the try hard afro through. This had cost the trip 40 minutes. Needless to say that guy got a rousing reception from the football team once he got back on the bus.

Still not to bad. We were still likely to make the flight but with less time to spare. Crusing down the I-5 to seattle was going nicely until suddenly we hit road works. Three lanes of traffic merging into one had the traffic backed up for kilometers, or as we were in America - Miles. Here the bus successfully lost another 45 minutes and effectively we all knew now that we would likely miss our flight.

Finally arriving at the airport at 11:35 we raced up to the check in counter, only to be greeted by a Gentlemen who we all thought had great delight in informing us that we would not be taking our flight to Chicago. The next option would be taking a flight to Denver at 6am and then connecting to Milwaukee, arriving at 1:30pm. This would mean not making it on time for our first game against Minnesota and struggling to make our 3pm game against a combined New York/Atlanta team.

Now we had 4 hours to kill until check in opened at 4am. About half the group went to a dodgy local bar near the airport and sang kareoke, the rest of us found the local Denny’s (dodgy 24hr diner) and had some food and played cards. At 3am in the Terminal super coach Stu decided that we should split up the team kit amongst the carry on luggage so that if the checked bagged got lost at least we would be able to play. This led to the handing out of the gurneseys. I grabbed number 17. This led to an impromptu team practice session in the Seatac terminal as everyone got excited and pulled on the kit. I was taking marks amongst the empty check in lines complete down to the boots and socks up.

By 4:40am we were through security and ready to catch the subway out to the departure gate. We were able to get about 30 minutes sleep at the terminal before boarding begun. I think everyone slept on the flight to Denver and then again on the flight to Milwaukee. We eventually arrived at the Milwaukeee airport at 1:30pm Saturday afternoon and quickly got into rental vans to drive the 40 minutes to the field. Our second game had been rescheduled to 5pm so we were pretty pumped to be playing - albeit without any sleep for nearly 24 hrs! Minnesota were refusing to play us/reschedule the first game we missed and thus it was confimred - forfeit!

The time for the first game had arrived. To make it fair there is a strict 50/50 ruling for players on the field at all times. that is there can not be more Australians than Non Australians on the field at any one time. I was a little apprehensive as my return to playing was to be at centre half back. I decided two things, to model my game on Chad Cornes, the second to make sure i could get a touch asap. I didn’t have to wait long to get a touch as New York won the opening bounce and had it moving their way. I successfully dispossed a player and gave off a handball to one of our players. This settled me and i was able to relax a bit. However i was not able to play quite like Chad Cornes would and given i was wearing 17 probably looked more like Stewie Dew trying to play like Chad Cornes, especially as both Dew and I have such a raking left foot. Anyway we ran out winners by just under 3 goals in game one, a historic moment as Vancouver was the first Canadian team to play at the US Nationals and here we were winning out first game.

Most of the team was pretty trashed following the adventures that proceeded and given that we had an 8am game the next morning most people were pretty keen for dinner and bed. The team skipped the offical banquet and instead went to dinner at a local steak house.

We awoke very early Sunday (6:15am) and headed out to the fields. Memories of junior footy games came flooding back to a lot of the team as the morning dew was still rising from the grass fields! I suggested it felt like the University Games back home where usually the team with the lesser hangovers usually won the games in the early mornings. We had turned up to play though as with the forfeit the previous day we needed to win big and hope that New York beat Atlanta so as to move through to the Div 3 grand final on percentage. Fired up we went on to win by 14 goals, but alas it wasn’t to be enough as although NY beat Minnesota, Minnesota went through by a narrow percentage margain to the final against Baton Rouge. Minnesota took a hollow Div 3 championship victory, with probably the two best teams in Div 3 being ourselves and NY.

Anyway it was 10am in the morning when the result was confirmed that we would not be playing in the grand final so it was time to hit the Coopers. That was one of the best things of the weekend. Coopers in all the colours of the rainbow. Hmmmm Coopers. Pales, Sparklings, Dark and Stout. Take your pick. Oh and the packet of 12 Caramello Koalas that i bought went down a treat. They had it all even down to the fruit tingles. More coopers and some time spent helping work the scoreboard on field one. It is hard to hold it up against the wind, change the score, watch the match, timekeep and eat Caramello’s all while holding a Coopers at the same time in the other hand. Lucky a native of Wisconsin, Kristy, who was there supporting her boy play for Milwaukee did most of the work.

It was then time to travel home to Vancouver (via Phoenix!). After suffering a bit of a largish hit in the second game i struggled to walk around as i had a corked thigh and bruised hip on the other side. It made for a long trip home.

A whirlwind trip, but one that was full of lighter moments and had a bit of everything. Cheers to the other Vancouver boys for a great weekend. Same time again next year??

Scores:

10/1/2005
Vancouver 4.10-34 defeated Atlanta/New York B 2.5-17

10/2/2005
Vancouver 14.6-90 defeated Golden Gate B/Mojave Greens 0.3-3

Goals Kicked by Aaron: 0
Goals Kicked by Aaron’s direct opponent: 0
**Not a bad net result**

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