American English football

Mainly that the sport was one played by those too wimpy to play rugby – for what was this strange sport except rugby with padding? I suspect (but only suspect – I hold no claims of omniscience) a large proportion of people who have no knowledge of the sport hold this old view of mine: why would guys play something like this, when they could play rugby instead? Rugby, in my eyes, was the paradigm of sportsmanship: American Football, on the other hand, merely a bizarre offshoot played by those stereotypical thickheaded “jocks” of American teen movies. It was a dull and lifeless game, played by dull and pathetic guys, incomparable to any English sport.

Right, now I’ve got those prejudices out of the way, let’s look at what the sport is actually like…

let's look at what the sport is actually like

When I came to University, I was surprised to find two of my friends played for the York Centurions, the combined University of York and York St Johns American Football team. Both were intelligent, laid-back and friendly guys, who didn’t seem to conform to any of my stereotypes of American Football players. I never saw them angry, and certainly never saw them as violent. Intrigued, I allowed myself to be roped in to watching their first home match of the season, under the pretext of photographing the occasion (to the slight annoyance of another flatmate, miffed I “forgot” to attend his hockey match).

Now, for all my going on about rugby, I know little about any sport, so I never really had a chance to understand much of what was going on: but what I saw, caused me to rethink a few of my old preconceptions.

Here was a sport unlike any I had ever watched before. Yes, it is incredibly brutal – since that day I have seen kneecaps broken and my friend gained a concussion from a tackle – they wear that padding for a reason. The rules are different to rugby; it can be much more dangerous. And while I have certainly heard foul obscenities from the mouths of the players on the field and it is a sport that seems to turn the gentlest of men into fierce and aggressive firebrands, what sport doesn’t do that in order to channel that aggression into a winning game?

I was given the chance to study the sport close up, through the lens of a camera, and I realised that there is much more to this game than can be seen through such a lens.

There are special rules that hint at the nobility of the game – for example, the aggression can be dropped in an instant once no longer needed: there is a rule that if a player is injured, all players remove their helmets and drop to one knee in respect until said player is removed from the field. Seeing this is a humbling moment: the boisterous and raucous crowd suddenly falls silent, and it could almost be too quaint to be real, until you realise that this is respect in action.

This sense of respect and comradeship, even across teams, that I felt so strongly the first time I saw this enacted, has strengthened the more games I watch. Despite a large team, these boys are bound together by the risks they take as that team, especially as a young team, this being their first season together. As a combination of students from the two Universities in York, they can represent something more than many of the other sports teams at this University, and there is a comradeship even with the other teams they play that I noticed was lacking in a recent match of rugby I attended. More times than I saw in the rugby, I have seen a player from the York Centurions offer a helping hand to pull up a player from another team, or a confession, however grudging, of admiration for an opposing player. Of course, this was probably a result of particular players, but I like to think there is something of the mutual respect in the game that should apply to all sportsmen. In American Football, or at least in this American Football, the York team cheers their successes, not the failures of the other team.

Oh, no! I think maybe I’m in danger of over-romanticising them now, so I won’t leave this by comparing American Football with rugby, it wouldn’t do either sport justice: my point is exactly that they should not be compared. They are both ball sports, and I should leave it at that, for fear of offending anybody.

What I should say, is, that if you feel inclined to broaden your sporting horizons you should head to a Centurion’s match and see for yourself how our boys play.

Just be sure to leave your preconceptions behind – I wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt by the shrapnel as they shatter.

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