American Football as the name implies is seen as American only games where I’m from...
Pictures Taken on 14 November, 2016 @Lagos, Nigeria.
BRIEF HISTORY
The foreign game American football arrived the shores of my great African country Nigeria, since more than 10 years ago, and by whom, I’m not sure. It then arrived my state 6 or 7 years later, by the help of a Nigerian-flown and returned from Sweden (Coach Emmanuel Embo). I found the game interesting and joined the Ibom Tigers (The only team in the state) and started as an offensive line man, which I later change for reasons of my small body size and of course nearly losing my teeth. Indeed it proved to be a strange game to every player, who didn’t understand the fouls and would attempt to even kick a fellow player.
THE STORY
For more than 4 years, we trained and played against ourselves, broke each other’s arms, scatter the team and reunite. The training is the most intensive of any sport I have ever been, and the unity in the team feels like family. In my country we have massive hills, this did well for our thighs as we did the running up and down of the hills, almost every day. We participated in power workouts, and tires are in abundance in my country.. so we could drag and run, just as we were shown. Indeed, I felt like I could jack up a lorry all by myself. But the question to ask was, with all this training, which team shall we contest against?
At this time, only three teams were known in Nigeria, ABU Zaria(The oldest and the strongest), Lagos Marines and the tiny we. ABU Zaria and The Marines, have either become too strong or tired of competing against each other Home and away. They were of course, tired of meeting the same muscles and faces, but also, they become extremely experienced. But we the Ibom tigers must play too if you agree, and we must play against either of the teams… so what are we waiting for?
American football is the strangest game in my part of the world. People find it funny to see a player run with a ball and also finds it extremely dangerous to get hit by another player and so every effort to get Private and Government support went in vain, every effort to recruit was fruitless. So, we were stuck with using our own purse, and training without equipment. Is that done anywhere else? The result of this is multiple casualties, but Africans are mysteriously strong, we kept coming back, I personally after dislocating my shoulder still came back.
We couldn’t contest over these years, because we were mentally and physically not good to go. No helmets and pads? No good gym for building? Its suicide to think of a contest. But we did, maybe because we love suicides.
At the time of planning for our first match against Lagos Marines in November 2016, I was a defensive back (playing as a corner back) and one of the best in my team, because I was the quickest in defence and also very flexible (and I’m not exaggeratingJ). But by this time, when we finally close a deal for a friendly match, most of the old team-mates were tired of training without contesting and so they left. Out of the 21players that we had, 15 were new to the game and not familiar with the game, so we were left with just 6 players that can show you the endzone confidently. Nevertheless, we packed up and left very early on 12 November, 2016 in anticipation of the match on 14 November, 2016. The funny part is that, we had four shoulder pads to be shared by 21players, the trip was on every player, some of the equipment was on every player and so the game was our game and we were the sponsor. How shall we cope? Because even the sustenance till match day, was on each player..
Photo:lagos 2016
However, as you can see we made it safely to Lagos and had a game with four pads, and i was there all along and will share the entire story as i witnessed in my second post, but judge, do you think this should be practiced in my country? And please consider its name, this is Africa. See you on the second part.
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