Thursday, March 26, 2015

More Video and Some Strange Doings at Practice Tonight


Wednesday, 25 March, 2015:

The day was another one dedicated to breaking down Zaragoza Hornets' game film. 

After watching several of their games, certain things become abundantly clear. First, they are better than their 1-4 record would indicate as they have lost three of their games by a total of only 29 points. Their biggest loss was by 14 points to undefeated Reus, it was the Imperials closest game of their 6-0 campaign.

This also tells me that their players have the courage to continue on as they are playing better now than they were at the start of the season.

Finally, they have a solid defense having given up only 11.6 points per game. By comparison, I believe that we have a good defense and we are allowing 15.4 points per game.

This will be another tough game for us, here are the results of the Hornets 1-4 season:
Lost to Barcelona 8-14
Lost to Murcia 0-15
Lost to Santurtzi 0-8
Lost to Reus 7-21
Beat Barcelona 10-0

In the evening, I was off via the tram to another round of Junior and Senior Cobra practices.

Closed gates at our AstroDirt facility

The Junior practice at 6:30 was a disaster. First, the powers that be would not allow us on our normal practice field because of the recent rains for the third time in our last four scheduled Junior practices, for fear of tearing up the mud.  Secondly, only six Juniors showed up to work out. No linemen bothered to come on this damp evening.

Two Hand Touch

We were allowed to use the outdoor basketball court that doubles for an indoor soccer sized facility to play a game of four on four two hand touch. Two of our coaches joined into the game, I was not one of them.

There was also discussion of a potential problem that the Cobras may soon be facing because of our Junior game at Mallorca about two months ago.

For some background, Mallorca is an island located about 180 miles off of the coast of Valencia, therefore, travel to games there requires an expensive flight. Thus teams throughout the eastern part of Spain do not want to be placed in a league with them because of the tremendous cash outlay for traveling to play at their stadium. After much discussion, Mallorca was placed in a four team league for Junior squads with Cehegin, Granada and Murcia.

Remember that the flight to Mallorca from Valencia first requires that the Cobras somehow get from Murcia to Valencia which, by train, is a three hour trip.

To ease the financial pain, we were told that Mallorca's sports federation would cover one half of our travel costs -- GAME ON!

A few days before our scheduled trip to Mallorca we were informed that, no, their sports federation would not be able to honor that previous commitment -- GAME OFF!  

We simply do not have enough in the treasury to play this game without the promised aid. Thus the game was not played.

Now the rumor is going around that because our Juniors did not play that game, the national governing body of our sport, Federacion Española de Fútbol Americano (FEFA), may sanction the club by not allowing us into the playoffs should we earn the bid on the field.

Wonderful.

On a positive note, this coming Sunday's game, our last home game of the regular season, has been moved from Estadio Monte Romero's El Campo de Sueños to an artificial turf field in the Murcian suburb of Molina de Segura.

This is especially good news because there are three rugby games scheduled to be played on El Campo de Sueños on Saturday.

Still, it feels a bit like the Baltimore Colts leaving for Indianapolis in the middle of the night for a better deal.

We did have a good practice with the Seniors so the day ended on a good note!

BEAT THE HORNETS!!!

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