IRON WILLED
Like every other sport in the country, American Football has had to adjust to the new reality of a global health crisis, but the determination to keep Irish gridiron growing has not wavered
‘IF THIS LOCKDOWN GOES ON, GUYS MAY LOSE INTEREST’
EVERYONE is still adjusting to this strange new reality. ‘I haven’t had anyone to boss around on the training field for the past couple of weeks,’ Emma Burrows says with a chuckle after another long day trying to keep her toddler entertained.
Burrows is assistant head coach of South Dublin Panthers in the Shamrock Bowl Conference of the Irish American Football league, as well as holding a similar role with the National Flag Football team.
She also has a background in sports psychology and is profoundly aware that the suspension of training across the board may affect mental health in this time of social isolation.
‘The thing is that with our club and sport, like a lot of sports, the main catchment group we are dealing with are young men in their early to mid-20s, who are the most at-risk category for mental health,’ Burrows points out.
‘This outlet of going to training twice or three times a week, meeting up with team-mates, the dressing-room camaraderie, that’s all been taken away from them.
‘So, I have been on the phone with them a lot over the past week, making sure the team captains stay in touch too, just to make sure they are okay at this uncertain time.’
The 34th season of the league was supposed to begin three weeks ago but American football, like all sports, has gone into lockdown.
It is currently postponed until the middle of April, but that could be extended depending on advice from Sport Ireland and the Federation of Irish Sport.
It also means that some try-outs for the female Flag Football team (the non-contact version of the sport, similar to tag rugby) have been cancelled.
‘The Flag Football European championships are next year, and we had hoped to enter a female team, as well as a male team,’ Burrows explains.
‘We had organised a few try-outs and recruitment days, hoping to get athletes from other High Performance sports who want to try it. But that has all been put on hold.
‘Essentially, there is no contact with Flag Football. It is faster, played on a smaller pitch and the basic skills are run, jump, catch and throw. You need some agility and speed. We had a few players from basketball interested in joining, and some camogie and Gaelic players, too. It is a good opportunity for players who have played at inter-county level or Division One Superleague.’
Burrow began coaching as a 15year-old, taking underage basketball sides at the Dublin Raiders club, where Ed Randolph was one of her mentors. Even though she was a Steelers fan growing up in Cabinteely, a consequence of having a close friend from Pittsburgh, it wasn’t until she moved to DCU that she became involved in the sport.
‘When I was doing a sports science degree in DCU, a friend asked to get involved with the Panthers, or the Dublin Dragons as they were called then. They were based out in Westmanstown in Lucan. I came on board first as a video analyst, did that for a season. I started helping out with some sessions.
And then, Stephen McDonnell, who had been our offensive co-ordinator, was moved up to head coach and he asked me to become the performance coach of the team. I was doing a PhD in sports psychology at the time,’ Burrows recalls.
There were some salient differences from coaching kids basketball, though.
‘Obviously, demographics is the big difference. With basketball, you are coaching kids from four to 14, and it’s a mixed-sex sport up until 14. With American football, everyone is over 18 and you are dealing with players from that age up to their early 40s.’
The Panthers were at a low ebb when Burrows initially got involved. ‘We had maybe eight people turning up for training, hadn’t won a game the previous season. So Stephen asked me for ideas on how to change that. And from being the performance coach, I have gone on now to be assistant head coach.
‘The numbers have really picked up. We have 45 or 50 players at some sessions. Having worked with Olympic and Paralympic athletes, I can see the same attitude driving our players.
‘This is a High Performance environment in an amateur game.’
Burrows’ elevation to assistant head coach in what is commonly viewed as a macho environment must have raised a few eyebrows. She insists that within her own team, nobody saw it as an issue and McDonnell, as head coach, was a big part of that.
‘I was nervous initially about going into that environment, a very male environment, but our head coach is very much of the mind that this is a game for everyone, and there is a role for everyone, no matter who they are’ says Burrows, whose day job is as Player Development Manager for the Professional Footballers’ Association of Ireland (PFAI).
‘I met with the players, first as a group and then on a one-to-one basis, explaining about performance coaching and sports psychology. And everyone bought into it.
‘There have been a few incidents but, in five years coaching, I can count them on one hand. The odd comment from opposition, about women or perhaps, something was said about my appearance. Nothing that would have been threatening but it still wouldn’t be a comment that would be made about a male coach. But I have always had the back-up of my team.’
The team have enjoyed plenty of success during Burrows’ time as assistant head coach, making it all the way to the Shamrock Bowl last year, losing to Belfast Trojans in the final. It is something that American Football Ireland (AFI) are keen to emphasise. That this can be a sport for everyone, even if its image, based on the NFL, is masculine and aggressive.
Apart from Burrows making waves as a female coach, there are female officials, while Orla McAleese is currently the AFI chairperson. The sport has come a long way from its uncertain beginnings in this country, when a few like-minded individuals got together in the mid-1980s, as the NFL made its first impact on this side of the Atlantic.
Kevin Klatt was part of those early days. Born and bred in Ohio, (‘if you got a dart and fired it into the centre of a map of the States, that’s where I am from,’ he says by way of explanation), Klatt moved to his wife’s native Gorey in the early 1980s.
Having been a quarterback in high school and college, he played for the Dublin Celts in the second season of the league, making it all the way to the Shamrock Bowl, which they won by beating Craigavon Cowboys.
‘I didn’t get involved in the sport again until 2015,’ Klatt says. ‘John Lynch, a friend of one of my sons, emailed me to say they were starting up an American football team in Gorey and he was wondering if I would come along to show the team some plays. We met up for the first time in the autumn of 2015. Ten guys showed up for that practice, not even enough to play a game. We went through a few offensive plays with them and after doing three or four of those practices, they asked me to be head coach.’
Wexford Eagles played their first game on May 1, 2016 when they met
North Dublin Pirates. ‘We had 29 players suited up for that first game and 27 of them had never played one full down of American football before. We beat them 35-6 that day, so we got off to a good start.’
A familiar face was refereeing that day, Derek Ward, who was on the Celts team when Klatt was quarterback almost 30 years before.
‘A lot of the offensive plays we ran in our first game was like those we ran with the Celts in 1987.
‘Derek came over at the end of the game and said he recognised a lot of those plays.’
The Eagles went undefeated through the regular season that first year, meeting Donegal/Derry Vipers in the play-off final.
‘It was a close game but with 40 seconds left on the clock, the Vipers got the winning touchdown. That was a bit of a heart-breaker.’
Along with seven other teams, Wexford Eagles are in Division One, the second tier below the Shamrock Bowl Conference. Klatt was expecting a big season, but now all those plans are up in the air.
‘We have a very solid team. We have 37 registered players and there are always 28 at least at practice. I have been involved in sport and with teams for 50 years now and this is as solid a group of guys as I have ever come across. They all come from different backgrounds, all walks of life but when they come together, they are all focused on making this team as good as it can be.’
With more than 1,700 members, 22 clubs playing full-contact football and another
25 teams playing flag football,
American Football
has been growing at a fast pace in Ireland over the past few years, but given the extent of the current crisis, nobody is quite sure what this will do to its rate of expansion.
‘The accessibility of the NFL, and even increased coverage of College Football and with College Football games in Dublin, all of that has contributed to the growth of the sport,’ Klatt points out. ‘But my worry is if this lockdown goes on much longer, that guys will just lose interest in playing and walk away and that will be very damaging for the league.
‘There’s talk of a prospective start date of May 3 at the moment. But with American football, you will need a few practice sessions before going out and playing a game or else guys are going to get hurt.
It’s the sort of sport where you need a few sessions before a game. It would be nice to get back on a football field soon, but obviously getting on top of this virus is the priority for everyone.’
Klatt has made a suggestion to the league that if they are not allowed back on a field until June then the AFI should consider running a knockout style tournament over six or seven weeks this summer.
‘An FA Cup-type competition, that could easily run from the end of June to the end of August. It will be considered, everything will be until we discover when we are getting out of this.’
Another concern is the College Football Classic in the Aviva Stadium in August between Notre Dame and Navy. AFI president Orla McAleese pointed out that they have a tie-in with the organisers.
‘This is a massive event for the sport here and it’s part of a fiveyear series. Not only will it give exposure to the game in Ireland, but it will also give our members exposure to education events during the week, coaching clinics, officiating clinics as well as programmes for players,’ she says.
While the hope is that we will be out of this crisis by August, it is still a nagging concern, especially for Klatt, who was looking forward to the game for personal reasons. Last summer, Billy Anderson, the special teams coach for Eagles, died in a car accident on his way to the team bus that was due to travel to Armagh to meet Craigavon Cowboys. Anderson was a devoted Notre Dame fan and Klatt was hoping to go to the Aviva with Anderson’s father and family.
‘That was a real tragedy for the team to deal with,’ Klatt remembers. ‘The rest of the season was a bit of a blur, we still had a lot of games to play but it was hard for the players to get motivated for them. We were going up to Armagh to play the Cowboys and Billy was on his way to meet the team bus when the accident happened.
‘We were on our way up to Armagh when we heard. We had to pull into the M1 service station at Lusk. I had to tell our players and ring the Cowboys. It was really tough. But the whole association rallied around us. There was a real show of togetherness from the sport at Billy’s funeral. The league really came together and rallied around us as a club.
‘And they named the MVP trophy for the end of season game the Billy Anderson memorial trophy.’
Having had to deal with that tragedy last season, the sport now has to find a way to deal with a global crisis that has affected every aspect of Irish, and global, life. But like everyone else, American football in this country is learning to
adjust to a strange reality.