Warsaw Eagles: Poland's Team

The Eagles quarterback scans the defense before taking the snap and dropping back. He knows exactly what to do, because he's done it twice already in this game and the Owl's can't stop it. He fakes the hand-off to his right, then rolls left, shielding the ball so the D can't see it. The linebackers freeze, giving the QB time to turn and look upfield.  He spots his receiver 5 yards behind the safety and lets it fly. Jeremy Dixon has to slow down to catch the ball, but it's still no contest. He trots into the end zone, untouched.

Then the entire team does "the Bernie" dance to celebrate the touchdown. For the 5th time in the first quarter.

+++++++++++++

When I heard that there was an American football league in Poland, I knew I had to see it. To be honest, I didn't know what to expect, but I miss football so much that it didn't matter. The website, unfortunately, is not in English, and it isn't easy to figure out the schedule. When I finally found the season schedule, it didn't clearly state which games are home games, nor did it state the start time for any game except the nearest one.  With some help of some friends, I was able to figure it out, and made plans with some friends to go watch the last game of the season, against the Bielawa Owls.

Warsaw Eagles

From looking at the scores of earlier games, the Warsaw Eagles are pretty good. Or at least they are much better than the other teams. Scores of 55-0 and 69-0 stood out like the Huskies in the early 90's. They had one loss, and were 2nd place in the league. It seemed that, at the very least, the game would be exciting.

Plans were set for some "tailgating" at my apartment before the game (kielbasa and beer), and a bus ride to the stadium. I scheduled everything out, to make sure we'd be on time. Every game of the season had started at 4pm, so I assumed this one would start at 4 as well.

There were 10 of us going, including 4 Polish, 2 Bulgarians, a Romanian, and 3 Americans (5 guys and 5 girls). This was going to be a fun little outing.

As we went outside to walk towards the bus, the clouds above decided to play a very mean trick. Literally within a minute of being outside, the rain was dumping down so hard that we all had to run for cover and wait for it to pass. In my mind, I was thinking that there was no time in the schedule for "hide under trees, street signs, and awnings waiting for the monsoon to pass". I guess we were going to miss our bus, which would make us a little late. I guess I didn't really mind.

Hiding from the rain

Finally the rain died down, a few of us were soaked, in just our t-shirts.

We got to the bus stop to find out that the stop was closed. Since we had some Polish guys with us, I let them figure out what was happening, but even the signs at the stop didn't explain it. The bus stop just had a cover over the sign, saying that it was not in operation. There was some street racing that day, so it was probably part of the reason.

We walked down the street, to the next bus stop. And this was also a failure. Written on the stop was the number of our bus...with a big X through it. I'm still not sure what that means, but I'm gonna guess it's something like "you can stand here all you want, but your bus ain't coming".

So we called cabs, and waited. And it started raining again.

This is not how I planned it.

The cabs took 20 minutes or so to arrive, but we had a football with us (although flat), so we tossed that around. No offense to my Euro friends, but you can clearly tell when someone hasn't thrown a football before.  When they throw, the ball comes off their hands with either some crazy top spin, side spin, or no spin, and is hard to catch because it's like catching a knuckling punt. Basically they throw like girls. (j/k!)

So the cabs come, and take us to the game. The total cost of the cab is like $7. It's so cheap that basically we should have just planned on that to begin with, without worrying about the buses. But don't worry, we'll get another chance to take a cab to the game (foreshadowing...).

As we approached the stadium, I get a text from Basia saying "we just got here, but there's nobody here". I figured, well, it's not that popular, so I'm not surprised if it's a small stadium, plus it just got done monsooning, so maybe people are scared of coming outside.

When we pulled up, I realized what she meant. Really, there was NOBODY there. What is happening??? I walk into the lobby area of what looks like a small high school stadium, and see a poster. The game doesn't start at 4pm. It starts at 7pm. DOH!

Now what? We decide to head to La Playa, a beach bar on the Wisla river, since the sun was coming back out, and we wanted something interesting for Tailgate Party II. We had a good time at La Playa, and afterwards, 4 of us went back to the game, for the real start time. 6 of us had more interesting plans.

Everyone at La Playa during Tailgate Party part II

View of Old Town across the river from La Playa

When we arrived, it was already a rout. It was only 10 zl to get in (less than $4), and the seating was open. It was like a small high school atmosphere. There were a few hundred non-hooligan (nice) people in the stands (dressed in Orange, and loving every minute of it), 8 cheerleaders in jean shorts and jerseys, and a guy leading the crowd in 2 main cheers. One was "DE-FENSE!", like the one we all know. They did this one about half of the time. The other cheer? It was the ever popular and creative "OFF-ENSE!". LOL. He also led the crowd in the wave, but since it was just a couple sections of bleachers, the wave only lasted 3 seconds before ending. Oh and he was wearing a shirt that said "I am the American Dream". So great!

The Hype Man

"Dreamgirls"

By halftime the Eagles were up 61-0. Nope, that is not a typo. They scored by throwing bombs to Jeremy Dixon, one of their 2 Americans (each team is allowed 2 Americans on the field). You can tell he's not Polish, because, well, the name on his jersey is Dixon, and he's African American. Their other American is their QB. The final score was 68-6. The Owls kept it close after halftime.

Jeremy Dixon (middle), celebrates a touchdown (where are all the Owl defenders?)

Part of the problem is that the Owls only had 13 players. TOTAL. There were 2 guys on the bench, and it looked like one guy was injured. Most of the team played both ways (obviously) and it was pretty clear they were pretty new to football. QB pitches went to nobody, people were running into their own teammates, returners were dropping kick-offs (which there were a lot of), and I even heard their coach yelling (in American) "Hey! Do we have 10 or 11 guys out there!!???". Coach, when you only have 13 people on your team, you can probably just look at your bench, and if you see more than 2 people, you don't have enough on the field.

Confused Owls take the field


The big boys wait at the line of scrimmage (the ref was a girl, which was awesome!)

This raises the question...how do these guys learn to play to begin with? Do they have high school club teams? I'm still not sure. And do they get paid? If there were only a few hundred fans, who paid 10 zl each, there's only like $10 to pass around to each player, which doesn't include the costs of the stadium, transportation, equipment, vendors, workers, coaches, trainers, referees, etc. Who pays for it??? Or is it like a grown-up recreation league, where the players pay and the coaches volunteer?

My favorite part was that  everyone did the Bernie dance after every touchdown (players, fans,and the crowd), and there was even one time where the players were dancing with the cheerleaders. I'm sure this would have been a 15 yard penalty in the US.

Players and cheerleaders have a dance party during a break


I couldn't capture them doing the Bernie, but here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRBLmogRL4c

The stadium sold "American style" hamburgers (with lettuce, tomato, and "real beef"), but they didn't sell beer (do they realize this is Poland???). There was a jumping castle, and a baseball batting cage and a separate batting tee, where you could hit into a net. It seems they are trying to promote American sports, and it also seems that the Polish people find American sports interesting, but are not very good at them. We befriended a Polish kid (who spoke English to us), who just wanted to throw the football around in the next field over.  He didn't understand the concept of running to receive a pass. He would just turn and face me to catch the ball, even when I told him to run (and demonstrated for him), and threw it to one side of him to try to make him move.  He just looked at the ball bounce 10 feet to his side, probably wondering "why don't you throw it TO ME, you American idiot". Nice kid though. And I'm impressed how fearless he was to speak in English to us, and how he just wanted to try.

Poor guy isn't sure how to swing at the tee

After watching about 15 minutes of the game from the stands, and running around playing catch for about an hour, we decided to head back to town.

Another mission in Warsaw accomplished.