Maple Syrup, Schnitzel and Shoulder Pads

Long Overdue Update

2010-08-29T16:45:00.015+02:00

First of all I need to apologize for the length of time between posts and therefore this one will be quite long. My last update was a video post giving you a little insight into what was going on with the Mavericks and that I was looking forward to my vacation. As mentioned in the video, I was hoping to be able to put up posts while I was on the road but evidently I wasn’t able to do that. My vacation was fantastic and I will remember many of the events for the rest of my life.

Here is an update of what my month of July looked like; first of all my family visited me in Monchengladbach (Mom, Dad and Aunts and Uncles from Germany) they all attended their first football game and stayed another day or two to spend some time together and watch the World Cup together. Here is a group picture of us.

Following my family’s visit, I flew to Valladolid, Spain where I needed to take the train to Pamplona to meet up with my teammates and friends from Canada. The plan we had long established was to participate in the world famous San Fermin festival and the “Running of the Bulls”. Unfortunately, because my flight was delayed I couldn’t catch any trains to take to me Pamplona in time to run with the bulls the next morning. Instead I had to take a complicated network of bus trips to get me to Pamplona at like 130am so I could get up at 6am to run with the bulls the next morning.

“Running with the bulls” is a morning event that happens every day for a week in Pamplona during the month of July. The festival of San Fermin draws in thousands upon thousands of tourists each year to attempt the running of the bulls or watch the running. The city is literally overrun with people and there are virtually no places to sleep so we as a group spent two nights sleeping in the city parks. The city is a giant party and people are littered everywhere. I don’t exaggerate when I say littered; people are quite literally strewn everywhere.

Our group ran on July 13th and this was the second last running of the bulls for 2010, and the festival closed on July 14th. Some people will say that what we did was quite crazy and I have to agree with them; it was an unbelievable rush, a dangerous rush but an amazing one. Those who know me well understand that I am little bit of an adrenaline junkie and I look for these kinds of moments. This is not to say I would do the run again; I don’t see myself ever doing it again, I understand the danger I put myself into and I am glad I did it but I don’t think I will do it again. I won’t say never again but probably not.

After being in Pamplona, running with the bulls, partying for two days, sleeping in the park, attending the bull fights this is what I looked like arriving in Barcelona. It's not a pretty sight but I think it was pretty hilarious and right on par with what the experience was like.

There isn’t much to say but that’s what Pamplona, the San Fermin Festival and putting your life on the line will do to you.

We were in Barcelona for three days and got to enjoy the sights, the nightlife and all the wonderful things that Barcelona has to offer. Here are a couple pictures from that leg of the trip.

Following Barcelona, I headed to Interlaken, Switzerland with my friends that were visiting from high school. Interlaken in my opinion is one of the most beautiful places that I have ever been too. It is a small village located in the middle of a mountain range in between two lakes in the Swiss Alps.

Interlaken is one of the extreme sport capitals of the world and it really lives up to the hype, think of any extreme sport and there is a high likelihood that you can do it there. Naturally being the adrenaline junkies that we all are we decided to do some canyoning. Canyoning is a combination of rock climbing, cliff jumping, rappelling and a whole lot of awesome! Instead of explaining further here are some pictures.

The next day my friends from Canada had to head home but my teammates were coming to join me for another day. Once they arrived we undertook a big climb, we decided to hike one of the many mountains at our disposure, and we climbed a 2400meter or almost 8000foot peak. We all started together but some of us wanted to be a little more adventurous and eventually split into smaller groups, it turned out that we found a little lake at 2000meters and took a swim. It was an unreal experience to take a swim so high up looking at these unbelievable mountains. Check the pictures.

That same day was when I left the group and headed to Vienna. My plan was to see Budapest and Prague before my girlfriend arrived in Frankfurt three days later. I know that its not enough time to see either of those cities in one day but I thought it would be a good way to spend my time since I had a train pass. I saw many of the big sights in those cities and would love to go back one day to see more of the city. Here are some pictures.

My girlfriend was in Europe for two weeks and we saw Bordeaux, France; San Sebastian and Barcelona, Spain; Amsterdam, Netherlands, Monchengladbach and finally Frankfurt, Germany. Here are some pictures from our trip.

All those adventures and places concluded my month long travel odyssey throughout Europe. Upon my return to Gladbach, it was back to business and we needed a few more games to close out the Championship.

This weekend we played our second to last game; it was against Lubeck and we won 49-7 to clinch the Championship. We were on a bus trip so it was be a good party on the way home. Here is a picture of my roommate Alan and I with Petra our adoptive mother as well as a team championship picture we took after the game.

The German Football League has put into effect a new clause that the first place team from the GFL2 automatically moves up to the GFL without having to play a relegation game. This has freed up about three to four more weeks of available travel time before I go back to Canada. Here is what we have planned. Fly to Greece for one week with stops in Athens, the island of Ios and Santorini. We then return back to Gladbach for two days and then fly off to London, Dublin and Stockholm for about three days each. We get back from that leg of the trip and the next day we head off to Munich for the world famous Oktoberfest to finish off our European football and travelling journey. A week later I will be coming back to Canada.

One of the reasons that I have been absent as of late from the blog is because I am trying to get myself organized for what work and what else I would like to do as soon as I get home to Ottawa. I am going through the same struggle that many people my age are dealing with, the ever-troubling question of “What to do with your life?”. I still don’t have an answer so the process is ongoing…

In my last month here in Germany, I will try to update you as much as possible about the little football that we have left as well as the travels that we have planned. Just like in July I will do my best but no guarantees. Twitter/Facebook will probably have the most updates. Thanks for checking out the blog.

G

Video Bar

2010-07-11T19:30:00.002+02:00

Alright everybody I know its been awhile since my last post and to try and find a solution to my lack of time for writing up blog posts I decided to start recording video and do my best at explaining what I am up too.

All you have to do is click on the videos above and watch them to find out what I am doing. The video bar links all my videos from Youtube to my blog so you guys can see all my videos directly here instead of having to go to Youtube. I have already added my two highlight tapes from university and my Vlog updates should be coming in as the trip goes on so check in regularly and watch them if they aren't too painful on the eyes and ears for you.

Erik

P.S. In case you can't see my videos and there are other videos up on the page that aren't mine just go to the Youtube website and type in "egalas70" my youtube name that should bring you to my videos as well.

Dusseldorf Panthers Showdown Round 1

2010-06-29T15:50:00.003+02:00

This past weekend we had our second game with the Recklinghausen Chargers. This was a back-to-back game since we had just played them last week in Recklinghausen. Well if you followed the scores of the game you know that we beat them pretty badly, 70-0 to be exact. It was quite a lopsided score and all our players got a chance to have a major contribution. Personally I didn’t play much offense and ended up with 1 catch for 20 yards. Defensively, our line and linebackers really controlled the game and I didn’t even have to make one tackle. Below is a sequence of pictures when I was returning a punt.

I can easily say this was the most uninvolved I have ever been in a football game but it was nice to see all of our teammates get on the field and be rewarded for the hours of hard work they put into our team. Unfortunately we lost another player to injury on Saturday; one of our receivers broke his ankle and will be out for a substantial amount of time. Hopefully with our break coming up he can heal up and be back on the field with us soon.

Naturally with the break coming up we are all getting excited for this vacation we are planning but we can’t get too far ahead of ourselves since we have our biggest game of the year on July 3rd. We play our rival the Dusseldorf Panthers; the winner of this game takes the lead in the league and holds the championship in their own hands. Dusseldorf has played one more game than us but they have a tie so if we win and close out the rest of the season in the same fashion as we have done so far we will have won the championship and get to play in the relegation game at the end of September to move up to the GFL. There is nothing else to say about the matter, this is a must win and then we can look farther ahead.

I also received the good news that two of my friends from Ottawa are visiting me in Monchengladbach, one is already here and the other gets here just in time for the Dusseldorf game. Its nice to get some friends from back home visiting and getting to see what I have been up in the last couple of months.

My parents, as well as my aunts and uncles will also be here the following week for my last game before the break. It was recently my mom’s birthday so it will be a nice celebration with the family together. This will also be the first time my aunts and uncles attend a football game so a new experience for them as well.

Yesterday, we went to the beach, this time with a bigger group and just relaxed after the big celebration from Germany’s victory over England. We spent the day lying around listening to music and playing beach volleyball not a bad time at all. It was pretty comical because at one point I lost my (cheap) sunglasses in the lake and kept diving down to try and find them but kept coming up empty-handed. Eventually I saw a lady with her son who had some diving goggles so I figured with my basic German I would try to convince her to let me borrow them for a couple of minutes so I could dive down and find my sunglasses. Eventually after a bunch of pointing at her son’s head and acting out diving in front of her (I am sure she thought I was a little crazy) I was able to borrow the goggles and retrieve my sunglasses.

My plans for the rest of the week are pretty low key since we have a big game this week but I will make a trip to Dusseldorf as well as Cologne to show my friend some of the sights to see in those areas. I am guessing I will end up climbing up the steps of the Dom but I can’t say I am looking forward to that, I really hate those tiny little spiral staircases. I can’t believe they send people up and down on the same staircase and of course the big people end up having to walk on the narrow part of the stairs, just great.

I will check back in a few days; drop a comment below, ask me a question or send me an email letting me know what your thinking.

World Cup, Vacation Plans and Rothenburg Ob Der Tauber

2010-06-25T21:45:00.004+02:00

Since my last post I have played in a football game, visited some family, been to a medieval town, watched the German National soccer team win a big game against Ghana at a public viewing site which led to lots of celebration and managed to organize most of my month long vacation in July. The time was used productively, but not as interesting for posting on a blog. Let me give you a little run-through.

So we played another away game at Recklinghausen and won 35-0. The game was fairly uneventful, I caught a couple passes and got a touchdown. I played defense and offense again and the cool thing was that I got my first quarterback sack (when you tackle the quarterback behind the line of scrimmage) since high school or you could call it my first sack. We play Recklinghausen again this week but this time in Monchengladbach at 5pm Saturday night. As long as we all come to play we should win this game again. Here are a couple of pictures from last week’s game.

The morning following the game, my roommate Allan and I drove down to Southern Germany to the town of Rothenburg Ob Der Tauber. One of Allan’s teammates from Oregon State is playing there and he wanted to go visit him. I took the chance to go see my aunt and uncle living an hour away in Heilbronn and spent most of Sunday with them. Since they needed to work Monday, I drove back to Rothenburg Monday morning to meet up with the guys. We spent the rest of the day walking around this medieval village. Rothenburg Ob Der Tauber is an old fortress and the city is still surrounded by the wall that protected it long ago. We walked the entire length of the wall. I spent most the wall-walk ducking or walking hunched over since the roof on the wall wasn’t built for 6 foot plus people. Below are a few pictures of Rothenburg Ob Der Tauber.

Wednesday night the German soccer team had a game against Ghana that would determine whether they would move on to the next round of the World Cup or not. Soccer being the number 1 sport here, our coaches organized that we practiced earlier and then the team could watch the game together at the Hockeypark amongst the couple thousand people that came to watch the game on the Jumbotron screen. Germany prevailed with a 1-0 victory as those of you following the World Cup already know, and therefore will play against England on Sunday in the quarterfinals. If you followed my Twitter feed or my Facebook news feed there is a picture linked of the four-lane street outside my apartment full of people dancing and hanging out on the street celebrating the win. The riot police were called in to clear the people since no cars could drive by… Ironically most of the cars that were driving by or trying too at that time were team Germany supporters driving there cars in circles around the Altermarkt honking their horns, hanging out their car windows with flags and so on. They love the “beautiful game” over here.

Planning my vacation was a tough challenge; so many places to go and not enough time. I think I have done a decent job travelling around so far considering the schedule we have but most of my sightseeing has been in Germany. I am hoping to get to see some more places outside of Germany in the second half of my time here. During my vacation, I will be spending time in France, Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Hopefully I survive travelling to all those countries during July and then I will be able to set my sights on London, Prague, Marrakesh, Munich (Oktoberfest), Warsaw, Luxembourg, Brussels, parts of Serbia and Croatia as well as some more time with my family before I leave in October. I realize visiting all those places in the little free time I have left probably isn’t realistic but I will give it a try anyways and get as many done as possible.

Drop a comment , send an email or let me know what your thinking.

Waterloo Scandal from a Different Angle

2010-06-16T13:49:00.000+02:00

As many football fans now know the Waterloo Warriors football program has been suspended by the University of Waterloo following the results of team wide drug testing. The university decided to suspend next season after 9 players tested positive for banned substances. The university ordered the whole team to be tested following charges being laid by the Waterloo police against a player involving steroids and other illegal contraband.

Many people have chimed in and given their opinion on this situation and what could be done, how it could or should have been dealt with or how to prevent it. I have been reading responses on the Canada Football Chat and tsn.ca and many of them are placing all the blame on the school for making its decision to cancel the upcoming season.

Many people have been mentioning that this decision by the university has hung the clean student-athletes out to dry; I agree with those points and this decision will forever impact the members of the Waterloo Warriors football community. The university’s decision has stuck the student-athletes with tuition fees, apartment leases; it may have cost some athletes possible professional football opportunities as well as many other problems that these athletes are now facing.

I feel for these athletes and can sympathize to a certain extent. I have never been part of a steroid scandal but I did have to endure a scandal during my time in university. I personally never had a full season cancelled shortly before either my return to school or in my rookie year but my teammates and I at McGill University did have our season cancelled early and had the possibility of the season being cancelled hanging over us every day of that season.

The circumstances were obviously quite different because the Waterloo scandal deals with the decisions of individuals and the scandal we endured was a result of team decisions. For those of you unfamiliar with that scandal, we had to deal with a hazing incident; which the media used to slanderously attack players and the team without correctly gathering the facts of the event in question. The media is obviously a two-edged sword; sometimes the desired story gets published and other times its just looking for a big story.

I am in no way defending our team’s actions; but I do mention this experience of which I am not proud of because I believe it brings forward a similar dilemma. Waterloo University has now had to deal with a public relations disaster. McGill University also had to deal with a public relations nightmare during our scandal and in the end it also decided to cancel the rest of our season. By no means does getting to play 6 games and then have the season cancelled compare to losing the whole season but the universities decided the same fate for the football program. A university’s public image is crucial to its existence and therefore extreme actions follow when that image is tarnished or altered.

The institutions decided what they thought would be best for the image of the school, not the football team. We had to discover this for ourselves at McGill and now the Waterloo athletes as well. The collective of people in the administration from McGill, and now Waterloo, decided that something needed to be done and set some precedents. Obviously this decision deeply impacts the current Waterloo football community and its near future but I believe that in the long run it will have a greater impact on a national level for football and hopefully amateur sport.

This decision by the University of Waterloo will force the Canadian Center for Ethics in Sport (CCES) to look deeper into how they can help prevent, monitor and control the substances that athletes are inducing in amateur sport. The athletes are ultimately responsible for their decisions to ingest banned substances but the governing body needs to assume some responsibility as well. When a community has lots of crime the police force is expected to control and clean up the mess and I believe the same could be said about doping in sports. If athletes can get away with doping then unfortunately some athletes will do so and until more rigid procedures are enforced doping will continue.

I believe that the current testing procedures are ineffective. I think that the “randomized” testing is well for lack of a better word, not random enough. I believe the term random in randomized testing, should also mean time of year; not just during the season, the testing should be sporadic. A university athlete trains and prepares him or herself year round and the drug tests should be put into effect during the off-season as well. It is obviously impossible to test all athletes several times a year due to the financial and logistical problems this poses but there are other plausible options and methods of performing these tests that could help control the doping dilemma.

I also think that invoking “targeted testing” would be a good idea, a procedure could be designed that would require teams to nominate a few players from opponents in their conference and have some of these players tested. Some players may find this shocking but if you have nothing to hide and are abiding by the rules then there should be no problems. I realize this allows opponents to control part of the testing process but I am only suggesting that this is done once a year to possibly help control some of the people that slip through the cracks of the randomized testing process.

In my five years at McGill University, I was never tested once. No big surprise here, I am like most university athletes, I was never tested during my entire amateur career. When I reflect and look back, maybe a couple teams in my conference may have wondered if I had taken any performance enhancers. I have never, and never will take anything of that kind but I was 191 pounds at my first McGill football training camp and by the time my fourth year training camp started I was 225 pounds. Not the biggest jump in the world but some teams may have been curious if my gains had been obtained through hard work or with the use of performance enhancers. I would not have been offended or had a problem with submitting to a test at any time to prove it.

Aside from the changes that I believe could help the testing process I also think that student-athletes need to take more responsibility. One thing that I probably didn’t understand well enough when I was in university was that just like I expect the school to support the athletics department and football team; it expects me to “support” the university. It expects me to represent the university to the best of my abilities.

When you are given the opportunity to play on a university team, you are representing yourself, your teammates, your coaches and all the alumni. This means that there are hundreds and thousands of people that your actions will reflect on. If you cheat, your actions not only affect you but all the people from your community. I hope that from this event some new effective procedures are put into place to allow athletes who are clean to continue to compete honestly and not have to suffer the consequences for other athlete’s poor, immoral decisions.

Let me know what you think.
www.erikgalas.blogspot.com

Spiel 6 Lubeck

2010-06-14T23:18:00.004+02:00

Second post in a week! Alright I know its been a while since that has happened but trying to get back on track with my posting as well as getting some organizing done for my upcoming break here in July. I am going to try and travel around Spain, Portugal, France, Greece and maybe other places as well; we will see how much can be done in that short time.

As you may have read on the twitter updates we won our game against Lubeck. This game was our first game at home since the home opener 5 weeks ago, it was a nice change to not have to get on a bus and ride to our game. When I woke up in the morning and saw the rain I figured we would be playing in a wet game but an hour later or so the rain stopped and by the time of kickoff at 7pm, the field was dry and we were ready to go.

The lead-up to this game was a little interesting and unusual because of Ty’s injury he was unable to play and I was brought back to the defensive side of the ball to play safety. I was a little disappointed at first to have to switch back to defense because I am an offensive player and much rather enjoy beating the defender in front of me then having to stop offensive players. Surprisingly I really enjoyed my time on defense this week and also made a few tackles 3 solo and 1 assisted, unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of me making those tackles so you will just have to take my word for it.

All week I was taking repetitions on both sides of the ball hoping to be able to play offense as long as I wasn’t too tired to play defense. I didn’t know how realistic this goal would be since I am also on a few special teams so it was going to be a game time decision and talk about it on the sideline throughout the game to see how much offense I would be able to play. I knew if it was going to be as hot as the previous week it would be a lot harder but since it was an evening game and it rained earlier in the day I wasn’t as tired and was able to play most of the game both ways which was really exciting.

Here are a couple pictures from the game.

On offense I had a decent game, 4 catches for 87 yards and a touchdown. The stereotype associated with a lot of wide receivers is that of the showman and many like to celebrate a touchdown with a “dance”, but the people that know me from back in Montreal and university football know I don’t really do touchdown dances. Those that know me from high school well, they might think differently and say that I did like to celebrate when I got to the end zone or sometimes even on the way to the end zone.

I don’t really consider myself one of those receivers that do touchdown dances or celebrations but I will dabble in celebrations from time to time. During warm-up for this game, I was feeling very excited and was joking around singing/dancing as I was handing the ball to our offensive coordinator after each of my routes/catches I was joking around that if I scored a touchdown in the game I would do the electric slide in the end zone. Well, I caught a short pass and ran in for the touchdown but on the way I was staring at the field goal posts and instead of doing the electric slide; I dunked the football over the upright.

I have never been penalized for a celebration and didn’t want it to start against Lubeck, so instead of throwing it down really hard I made sure to get it over the upright and pick it up and hand it to the referee as quickly as possible. I think that generally referees will let some things go as long as it is done quickly, they don’t have to wait or chase for the ball and obviously isn't disrespectful to the other team (the respect aspect is open to discussion since some people believe any celebration is disrespectful and others don’t think celebrating is disrespectful, I am somewhere in between and think it is a situational dilemma).

Enough from me; let me know your favourite touchdown dance, if you agree or disagree with celebrations, are they part of the football? Why is it ok in other sports? Or any other comments.

Back On Track

2010-06-11T00:55:00.008+02:00

After about two weeks off writing because my computer essentially crashed I have finally reloaded my operating system and can return to posting regularly.

In the past couple weeks, we have played two games and won both of them. The game against Bonn was a pretty easy game and we handled that one without any real difficulty. The second game and most recent was our final game against the Magdeburg Virgin Guards.

After the game against Bonn, I spent three days in Freiburg, Germany visiting my family there and getting the chance to visit the little village (Grafenhausen) that I spent two years living in when I was younger. I got the chance to visit the old farm that my family used to own and where my mom and her siblings grew up. The new owners have been restoring the property and in the short time that they have owned the property, the family living there has done an impressive job rebuilding/remodeling the property since it was basically unlivable when we sold it.

I also got the chance to go to France (which is just across the Rhein river near Grafenhausen) and eat a traditional food called Flammenkuchen. Flammenkuchen is similar to pizza, thinner dough and no tomato sauce; it can be prepared as dessert or main course, we had both. Just like pizza; flammenkuchen have many different types; we had some with onions and “speck”(smoked bacon), some with cheese and some with a combination of both. The dessert version is also quite tasty; it has “flambéed” apples with sugar on top of the dough. Here are a few pictures from that weekend.

In our first meeting versus Magdeburg, we beat them pretty soundly so we were hoping to do the same this time; the difference is that Magdeburg is 6 hours away and we needed to travel there the morning of the game. To the boys back at McGill, try to think the road trip back home from the East coast games on the bus but instead we stopped halfway and played a game, it was awful. We left at 6am from the Hockeypark and we stopped twice, once to pick up players that live on the way and the second time for a pregame walkthrough and a lunch prepared by Petra or as we imports call her “mom”.

When we arrived in Magdeburg it was about 30 degrees Celsius, you might think great, that is beautiful sunshine and wonderful conditions to play a football game but it was too hot. After a long bus ride, your legs are cramped and far from the best condition to be playing a football game, the sun only makes it worse by making it harder to stay hydrated and easier to cramp up. Many players and I were up on the field earlier/longer than usual to try and loosen our legs and get ready for the game.

We all did a good job getting ready since we took a commanding lead into half time. I obviously can’t speak for everyone but halftime was the worse thing possible for my legs. Sitting down and taking a break for a few minutes made the second half unbelievably hard for me to get my legs going again. I think the toll of the bus ride and the heat made the second half much harder for us as a team and we didn’t play as well and it became a game. Magdeburg came back and a couple of times were within striking distance; the game ended 37-29 Mavericks. It was a good character win for our team to remain undefeated as well as winning our fourth consecutive win on the road. Here are some pictures from our games against Bonn (baby blue) and Magdeburg (green/red).

As previously mentioned Magdeburg is 6 hours away from Monchengladbach, the bus ride took us from the Western border of Germany to the Eastern one. Berlin was only an hour and a half from Magdeburg so we decided as “Amis” that we would take a car with us to Magdeburg and then drive after the game to Berlin to spend a couple days there visiting the sights and enjoying the nightlife. We were supposed to be four players spending a few days in Berlin but Ty one of our Corners strained his MCL in the game and had to go back to ‘Gladbach to get evaluated by the doctors.

Since Ty had to go back to “Gladbach”, three of us decided to go and visit the sights. Berlin is a huge city with many things to see and do but we were only there for a day and half. We got the opportunity to see many of the big tourist sights such as Checkpoint Charlie and the Berlin Wall as well as the Brandenburger Gate but there were also many more that we didn’t get to see. Berlin has so many sights to see that we clearly didn’t have enough time to see everything but we accomplished a lot in our time there and enjoyed our time in Berlin. Below are some pictures from our time in Berlin.

Send me an email, post a comment or ask me question if I missed anything.

Apartment, Gym and Pre-game Spiel 4

2010-05-28T19:49:00.004+02:00

I have been dealing with some computer problems and have been putting off wiping my hard drive until I got this post up and then it’s a fresh start with the computer. At least this time I got a chance to back everything up first and then go ahead with the wipe.

As previously mentioned I would put up some pictures of my apartment here in Monchengladbach so you can see what it looks like. I am very happy with the apartment; to be honest I was expecting much smaller so when I arrived and saw the size of this apartment I was happily surprised.

The first few weeks I was by myself so the apartment felt huge but once my roommate got here I didn’t feel like I was living in this huge loft. Ironically, the apartment proceeded to get even cozier for a few weeks while another import player had to live with us for a few weeks since his apartment wasn’t ready.

I went from the original feeling of having too much space to being three and feeling like we were always invading each other’s space. It actually reminded me of my first year outside of residence at McGill when we were three students living in a two bedroom apartment and used the closed living room as the third bedroom, that was something I didn’t want to do again so I am happy that lasted only a few weeks. It doesn’t help when every morning, the guy sleeping on the couch wakes you up by asking… I mean yelling: “You trying to get jacked today?”

Here are the pictures of the apartment (my room, the kitchen and living room) and the gym (the guy flexing in the back is our running back, or as we like to call him “Jacked Norris”):

The apartment has everything we need and even a nice balcony that we occasionally use to play cards outside or to store our garbage bags since we can’t figure out when garbage day is. We have asked people in the building and checked the website online but nothing seems to match up and no one seems sure when the garbage day is versus recycling or compost. We have resorted to just looking outside on the main street and trying to decipher what day it is or taking the trash to a dumpster nearby. Better than just letting it pile up for months; we heard that’s what the guys did last year since they couldn’t figure it out either.

Tomorrow we play against the Bonn Gamecocks; also another away game and we are hoping to continue the winning streak. Our head coach and some of the staff are calling out the starters because it takes us too long to get into a rhythm and we are letting teams hang around with us too long. We need to come out of the gate firing on all cylinders to make a statement and not give our opponents any hope in staying in the game.

I am off to visit some more family this weekend in southern Germany so I am looking forward to seeing my family’s old farm and the little village that I lived in.

Spiel 3

2010-05-24T23:31:00.005+02:00

As you may have read on the twitter feed game three ended with another Mavericks victory 39-10. There are some positive and some negative points that have come out of the game; first and foremost we won and our team walked away healthy. We have lost a few players this year to injuries and seeing an injured teammate is never fun. Most of those injured players were present at this game and it was nice to see them walking the sideline and celebrating the victory with us after the game.

The victory was extra sweet for our players and staff because there is a huge rivalry between Monchengladbach and Köln (Cologne) so there was a little extra punch behind the game. Just to put it in perspective, some fans put up a sign calling out our team for having some paid players. This is a normal thing here in European football since most teams bring in some players from the USA, Canada and other parts of Europe to play for their team. There are rules protecting the number of import and non-import players on the field just like the CFL but this was just some fans trying to spice up the rivalry; below is a picture of the banner.

The glaring negative point that sticks out from this game as well as the game against Langenfeld is the penalties we have been taking as a team. I heard a statistic today that we had about 200 yards in penalties against Köln. Those penalties keep opponents drives alive, end our drives, give them better field position, make ours worse and they are demoralizing for our team and keep opponents hopes alive.

As football players we never want to get caught for a penalty so excuses to avoid the blame on penalties are common and numerous for example: it was the referees fault, the ball was already snapped, there was no whistle and so on but there is one thing that doesn’t lie and that’s the eye-in-the-sky (game film). We will go back review the game tape and hopefully rectify the problems and move on.

On a personal note, this was a breakout game for me; I had yet to really produce much of a game in my opinion since I had been in Germany and I was happy to finally deliver a much better performance. I had 6 receptions for 205 yards and 3 touchdowns.

Below are a few pictures from a few different websites. If you want to check some pictures from the two photographers websites here are their links.
- Daniel On Tour
- American Sports Info

A side-note/inside joke for those guys that know me from back at McGill; yes I was throwing and completing a pass after there was a botched snap on a point after attempt, so much for noodle arms. (We used to joke about my long “noodle-like” arms).

That’s it for now, my next post will have some pictures from my apartment here in Monchengladbach so you guys can see where I am living. Drop a comment or question below.

Neue Nachrichten und Pregame Spiel 3

2010-05-22T18:17:00.001+02:00

Hi Everyone,

Sorry for not having put up any posts this week. I was visiting family in Frankfurt, as well as doing some sightseeing there. I also spent some time in Dusseldorf with some of my fellow “Amis”(Americans for the new readers) and some of the German players. I have started to outline a few more trips for my time in Europe so that I will be able to plan around some of my free time and visit some new places.

A new development that some of you may be aware of from reading the twitter feed was that I will also be posting parts of my blog on the Canada Football Chat website. Canada Football Chat has been growing exponentially since its creation in February 2010; the website’s objective has been to reunite all football related information in Canada in one location and allow all its users to be connected nationwide to all information related to football at all levels.

Tomorrow we play our third game of the season against the Cologne Falcons; it is another away game and this time we play on Field Turf. I have taken some heat and been on the receiving end of some jokes from friends here since I posted that blog entry talking about the different types of playing surfaces so all I will say is that I am happy to be playing on Field Turf and that is all.

I hope to have another update and some more posts for you to read by Tuesday that way the story can go on.

As usual feel free to post questions, comments or anything else that may be on your minds. Meanwhile here is a link to the Canada Football Chat website and it is also located in the sidebar section for links.

Spiel 2 and The night in "Dussel"

2010-05-17T12:58:00.002+02:00

It has been a couple days since my last post, I am currently in Frankfurt visiting my aunt and my dad will be making a quick stopover on his way back to work. I have spent most of my time since the game travelling to Frankfurt, hanging out with my aunt or resting since I had a long night after the game.

As you may have read from the twitter feed in the sidebar; I chose to be the designated driver Saturday night since as a group of “Amis” we wanted to go out to Dusseldorf to celebrate with some of the German players from the team. As I mentioned before they don’t all live near Monchengladbach so it’s not always easy to get to hang out with some of them. I decided to drive the guys since I knew I had to be up early and figured it will save us all a little bit of money; little did I know it would turn into a mess.

So we all piled into one of our “Mav-mobiles” and drove into Dusseldorf to meet up with some of the guys in the Dusseldorfer Altstadt. Only problem was none of us really knew how to get there. Long story short after a few “detours”; we found a parking garage near the Altstadt and parked the car in there. I saw a sign that said the garage closes at 3am, probably mentioned it quickly but I don’t think anyone heard so off we were to party for a few hours.

With 3 am approaching we slowly started to wrap up the night (or so we thought) and headed back to the garage. We weren’t in any real hurry since some of the German guys said I must have misread the signs since usually the garages don’t close.

As we approached the garage, we all realized the entrance and exit had been closed off with giant metal gates. After cussing around for a few minutes trying to figure out a genius way to get to the car; we arrived at an executive decision that since two of the “Amis” had locked there keys in car when we parked it, that they would stay until 9am and drive the car back to Monchengladbach. The rest of us were going to walk to the train station and take the next train at 430am home.

We got lucky and called some friends that were out with us and they came and picked us up. You would think the drive would be easy going from there but instead the gas tank was already on empty so we needed to find a gas station pronto to fill up if not we would be pushing our way home. We then spent the next hour coasting through all the little villages on the way back to ‘Gladbach trying to find a gas station that would be open. We drove by I think 7 or 8 stations that were all closed, until the 8th or 9th was open. I have never been stranded in a car that ran out of gas but I was quite sure that Saturday night was going to be the first time.

I got home just past 5am and then had to pack up my stuff for the trip to Frankfurt. I climbed into bed around 6am and took a nap for about 3 hours.
Waking up following a game generally means sleeping in and sleeping off the bruises as well as the celebratory events of the night before. I got up and made it to the train station contrary to what my body and mind really wanted to do which was sleep for a few more hours. The ride to Frankfurt was easy and I was grateful that I reserved a seat on the long stretch of the train ride since it was a packed train and I was in no mood to be standing for that part of the trip.

Arriving in Frankfurt, I needed to transfer to a local regional train to make it to my aunt’s house, unfortunately in my zombie like state I boarded the right train but heading in the wrong direction. I didn’t realize it for a couple of stops and then had to get off and missed the train going back in the other direction so I had to wait on an empty platform for 30minutes without any other people around wondering how long I would be waiting to get back in the right direction.

After all that I made it to my aunts and took the rest of the day off so to speak.

Here is a quick overview of the second game as well as a couple pictures from the game.

This team was supposed to be one of the better opponents we will play as well as they were calling out our organization in some press releases so before the game even started there were already some “war of words” to build the anticipation of the game.

The game was a fairly close battle until late in the 3rd quarter when our offense continued scoring and our defense was making stop after stop. Final Score: 42-21

This game was more of a physical battle then the previous one and it also involved some cheap shots, which we were expecting with the way the game was going and the constant verbal jousting between both teams.

Personally, I didn’t have a statistically impressive game (3 catches for 22 yards, 1 TD) but I think I had an effect on how the defensive backfield was positioned to play our offense. I generally had two defensive backs playing a bracket over top of me allowing the closer defensive back to play any short routes aggressively knowing he has help over top.

They tried to blitz us a lot and our QB and running back both had success running for yards and TDs. Our running back is currently leading the league in quite a few categories so it will be interesting to see if teams will try to load the box and then hopefully that will allow me some more opportunities to make some plays outside; if not who cares as long as the wins keep going up on the board.

I think that’s all for now I am off to get some sightseeing done in Frankfurt as well as getting some shopping done for the boys back in ‘Gladbach trying to find some shoes to play on our Astroturf at the Hockeypark.

Let me know if you want more football details or anything else.

Die Feldtypen und Pregame 2

2010-05-14T17:20:00.003+02:00

Tomorrow we travel to play our second regular season game, this week we play against the Langenfeld Longhorns. This will be our first road game so I am interested to see the condition of the other field as well as the venue to see how other teams run their game day.

Our home field is Astroturf and every other team in our conference plays on grass so this will be a little bit of switch but should be nice. I have been dealing with some shin splints as of late so the softer playing surface should help that. The grass will also slow the speed of the game so it will be another adjustment that will need to happen.

Most of my fellow American teammates played on grass surfaces back home so this will be familiar territory for them but for me it’s a little bit of a change. At McGill University, we have a Field Turf surface. It is in between Astroturf and grass; it is an artificial surface as well, but the “grass” or turf is longer than Astroturf and has a rubber filling to cushion the field and simulate the same type of traction that grass would provide). I have generally found that Field Turf is faster than grass but slower than Astroturf.

My favourite surface to play on is Field Turf and that was what most teams in the Quebec University Football League compete on. Depending which university we were playing against there were different generations of field turf since there have been advancements and changes in the development of Field Turf. Overall the different Field Turfs played at about the same speed with some slight differences; it generally had to do with the length of the turf and the filling that was used. Some fields had really long turf and it was much closer to grass and others had a middle length turf but with larger rubber fillings; therefore the game speed changed a little each week.

One thing that remains constant about Field Turf, is that it is impossible to get rid of all the little black rubber fillings from your equipment, shoes, gloves and so on. Even after my several moves in Montreal you could still find the little rubber pellets everywhere in my equipment and apartment. When you watch a football game and you see a player trying to pick out the grass from his helmet or equipment after diving for a ball or getting tackled it seems pretty easy, well imagine trying to pick out millions of little pieces rubber that also stick to your skin. It is almost impossible to do; the pellets get into your shoes, socks, t-shirts, everything, a little annoying but small price to pay for playing on the best surface in my opinion.

Our conference in Quebec had some grass fields but usually they turned into mud fields during the fall. In the five years that I played in the Quebec University Football League we generally had to travel at least once a year to the Eastern Township part of Quebec. Sherbrooke and Bishop’s Universities are located in the Eastern Townships area and I do not remember ever playing a game there without some rain. For that matter I don’t think I ever played either of those universities home or away when it wasn’t raining. I hated travelling to those fields because the weather was constantly changing during the game. I believe that Bishop’s University has now changed Coulter Field to Field Turf as well so no need to worry about the field condition getting worse as the season progressed.

Here are three pictures where football is being played against the elements: one is a catch in my last game against Sherbrooke University (one of the coldest games I ever played in, wet and freezing rain) and the other is a before and at the end of the 2008 Vanier Cup (unfortunately I never got to play in the National Championship Game so I took those as a spectator):

Looking ahead to tomorrow’s game I am excited to be facing a new organization, back home at McGill, we played in a small conference and we often had a good idea what to expect from our opponents. Aside from the weekly adjustments and change in personnel many of the programs presented the same type of systems and schemes every year so playing in a new league gives me another opportunity to see how different programs run and prepare their teams.

A new week brings forward a new challenge and I am excited to see what the Longhorns bring to the table. I want to improve from the mistakes I made in the game last week and secure another victory for the Mavericks. We have been told that the Longhorns are talking up a storm and really want to get after us since we made a big statement against Madgeburg last week. Lets see what happens.

Das Auto

2010-05-11T17:34:00.003+02:00

About a day or two before leaving for training camp, our sports director took me to pick up one of the team cars. As you can imagine I was excited to get a car because this meant I would be able to get around Germany. There was one problem, I don’t know how to drive standard, well didn’t know how to drive standard.

Now some of you might know that most vehicles in Europe are standard transmission or manual shift; whichever you prefer. Unfortunately for me I had never had the chance to learn how to drive standard, so along with figuring out where I was, I would also be learning to drive again so to speak. We never had a standard vehicle at home and this would be a new challenge for me to learn while I was here; it was either learn, or walk.

Our sports director asked me if I wanted to drive the car off the lot from the sponsoring dealership but I told him that it probably was not a good idea and that he should take the first leg of this voyage.

Here is a picture of the Honda Jazz.

After leaving the dealership, it was my turn to take the brand new Honda Jazz for rip. Well like I said this happened a few days before training camp so as previously mentioned this was when my coach took me around to the different locations in Monchengladbach that I would be going too like the Gym, grocery store and so on.

Instead of getting to used to starting, stopping and shifting in a parking lot as I had hoped, I was put behind the wheel on a street with not much traffic. We only stayed there for the time it took for me to get the vehicle into second gear and we were off to explore Monchengladbach with my shaky shifting. Fortunately for me Monchengladbach is a pretty flat town and not too many hills so I didn’t need to worry about the roll back too much. I did pretty good right from the start; that’s not to say that driving with me didn’t cause whiplash but at least I didn’t stall the car every time I needed to start from standstill. I seemed to be able to get the car going with some choppiness; well heavy choppiness, but than I was fine once in second gear. I would get into trouble when I would stall; it seemed every time stalled, I would stall for three or four times and then get going; suffice to say the vehicles behind me really enjoyed having me on the road.

The first couple of weeks of driving were a little choppy but I got a hang of it and now I can proudly say I know how to drive standard and not give whiplash to my passengers. I have already driven in a few traffic jams, big city traffic (Frankfurt and Dusseldorf) as well as soccer fans driving to the game (they didn’t have much patience good thing I was already pretty comfortable by then).

Quick side note Monchengladbach is home to one of Germany’s premier soccer clubs, which plays in the Bundesliga (#1 league); they are called Borussia Monchengladbach and here is a picture of their stadium that I took from the roof of the Hockeypark; the stadium hold about 50 to 60,000 people(so I have been told). I am hoping to get to see a game before I leave 'Gladbach; soccer was the first sport that I played competitively so seeing a game would be really cool. As well a link to their team website.

After having that Honda Jazz for a few weeks, and some of the new imports arriving we went to return the car and receive our three new red Hyundai I20’s with team decals on them. We went for a quick photo shoot with the cars so they could write a press release about the dealership’s sponsorship of the team.

Here are some of those pictures.

I am happy that I was presented with the opportunity to learn how to drive standard since it can’t hurt to know how to drive that kind of vehicle. I want to thank my coach/driving instructor for putting me in the hot seat and dealing with all the “friendly” honking cars while I stalled. I think he just permanently had his hand up waving sorry to everyone around us. He told me that it’s a normal thing for him to go through because every time a new group of players from North America come over there are always a few that don’t know how to drive stick.

Drop me a line if you got any personal driving horror stories, or any questions about anything I mentioned or forgot to mention.

Spiel 1

2010-05-10T00:58:00.003+02:00

Game number 1 is under the belt and we did a pretty good job taking care of our opponent; the Magdeburg Virgin Guards. The final score of the game was 48-7 for the Monchengladbach Mavericks. We play them later this year so they will want some revenge.

We played a good game overall; the defense caused lots of turnovers and the offense took care of the ball and scored lots of points so that is always good.

Unfortunately we had a lot penalties some holding, some pass interference, block in the back and so on; the penalties happened on all sides of the ball; offense, defense and special teams. The game is refereed a little differently here and much more to the specifics of the rulebook. The referees seem to call the game to the "T" of the rules and not allow some physical discrepancies. Personally for me and some of the other players (German and Imports alike) needed to adjust to the reffing style, it was quite confusing because I have been taught and played a certain way for so long but we overcame the problems and will adjust for further games.

I personally had an OK game; I scored one touchdown but had a bad drop that I should have caught. The dropped pass could have turned into a long gain or maybe a touchdown as well as having converted the third down into a first down. I turned to run up field early and took my eyes off the ball as it was coming into my hands and dropped it; rookie mistake but I took care of it later and scored a long touchdown.

Overall can't complain we won and won big; our running back had a great game, I think he had four touchdowns. As we like to say; "He tore the field up!" Most of our opponents were at the game to watch since this was our first regular season game and I think we sent a message.

Here are a few pictures of me from the game; some are on kick/punt return or on offense as well as a picture of a team celebration for the fans at the end of the game. They were taken by one of the photographers that is at all our team events attached is a link to one of his websites.

End of Training Camp

2010-05-07T15:49:00.001+02:00

As previously mentioned, the last day of training camp started off a little later since we had our team barbecue the night before. We slept in and then had to pack everything up to clear out from the hostel and head to the Hockeypark for our team scrimmage.

The scrimmage was a “controlled” offense versus defense scrimmage (a game simulation); what that means is that there were no referees but the coaches controlled the scrimmage by whistles and also had the opportunity to talk to the players in between plays to correct things if necessary. The practice consisted of a warm-up, and an individual period (when the team divides by position with their positional coach to go over specific positional drills) then the team proceeded to play 48 plays.

The scrimmage was broken into four quarters and each “quarter” was at different locations on the field, using down and distance at each location just no punting or special teams. The offense would start 12 plays on their own 20-yard line; the second group of twelve plays was on the offense’s own 45-yard line, the third on the defense’s own 45-yard line and the fourth grouping would be on the defense’s 20-yard line and I think we may have done a few on the actual goal line as well.

Training camps are an all-consuming ordeal; from sunrise to sunset; it is football all the time and no time for you to take a moment and breathe. It is a very exhausting undertaking, not only for the players but also for all involved; from the coaches, to the support staff (equipment, video, food), the physiotherapy and doctors staff and so on. Once the practice was completed; I was excited to grab my things and head back to the apartment and get a chance to relax.

I want to reflect a little bit about the concept of training camp.

Training camps are a part of football; but most players have mixed feelings about them. We all know and understand how crucial it is to develop chemistry between players and prepare and evaluate players for the new season but there are always some downsides as well.

Personally, I don’t mind training camp; playing on offense it is very important to develop chemistry with your quarterback to understand how he thinks and reacts in certain situations. It is very important to be on the same page and the best way to do that is repetition and believe me there is a lot during training camp.

Some people could counter that point of view by saying that would only be the case if you were playing with many new players. They would say that if you have played with the same quarterback for many years that wouldn’t be as necessary since you already know each other’s tendencies.

I use the example of quarterback and offense because it is the most common one for me but I believe the same tendencies and concepts apply for defense as well.

When I think of training camp the only concern that I always have is the fear of injury.

You may ask why am I only concerned about injury during training camp and am not as worried about it otherwise. I am not as concerned about injury at other times during the season because I play football and when you play a contact sport, injuries will occur.

In training camp however, in my experience, is when you see the most players succumb to injury. It is a terrible thing to see a teammate get hurt by a teammate or just get hurt in a non-game situation. Training camp is a time period with such high intensity; injuries are almost unavoidable.

Every year that I have been in training camp there always seem to be a player get hurt and miss a significant amount of playing time and that is always a depressing thing to see. Football is played for about 4 or 5 months a year and the rest of the time is training; the preparation lasts for the rest of year. When you see a teammate get hurt; you feel for him; you know the long, tough hours he spent preparing to be ready for game day.

Another side affect that is also very common during training camp is the development of nagging injuries. These injuries aren’t bad enough to take you out of the game or practice but they are still there and a pain to deal with since you never feel like you can compete at your best potential. I know that more than once I have dealt with one of these injuries and they are no fun but a part of the game.

Many times these injuries develop or begin to appear during training camp because of the high number of practices (usually twice a day, for two hours or more) and the amount of running that takes place during camp. The toll that these hours of high intense practice place on your body often result in the development of tendonitis, shin splints or muscle strains that often will remain until the end of the season.

There are many more pros and cons involved with training camp that I could go into but I wanted to highlight a few and try to get your opinions. I have had the pros and cons discussion with coaches, players (veterans and rookies), therapists, and doctors, all in an effort to gauge a general consensus about training camp. What is your opinion? Should practices be shorter? Longer? Less intense? Less contact drills? Should there be more involvement with the therapy staff? How do you think it differs in other sports? Let me know what you think.

New Team Website

2010-05-06T23:56:00.003+02:00

The Monchengladbach Mavericks launched there new website. Click here or in the sidebar to check it out.

No post today but here are the two pictures from the website. My head shot and the team picture.

Die Verschiedene typen des Fussball

2010-05-04T23:35:00.004+02:00

At this point I will talk a little bit more about football in Canada, in the United States and in Germany/Europe. As some of you may already know football or as it is referred to here; “Amerikanishes Football” has two general set of rules; the Canadian version and the American version.

First a little history; football is a game that was born from variations of rugby and it can be dated back to the 19th century. There are several places where football was being played with a variety of rules but the first recorded match between two universities or organizations was on May 14th, 1874, between Harvard and McGill University. This game led to the spreading of organized football in the Ivy League and if you follow the yellow brick road you get to where you now have football played on five continents around the World.

Most of you reading this know of the two versions of “gridiron football” (that’s what they call it in Australia), being played in North America but below are some of the variations to understand the differences between the games.

The Canadian version of the game has:
- 12 players on the field
- 110-yard field
- 20-yard end zones
- 65-yard width of the field
- Field goal posts at the front of the end zone
- Players in backfield are allowed forward-motion to the line of scrimmage
- Three “downs” or attempts to advance the ball 10 yards
- A five-yard halo to protect the punt returner

The American version of the game has:
- 11 players on the field
- 100-yard field
- 10-yard end zones
- 54-yard width of the field
- Field goal posts at the back of the end zone
- Players are not allowed forward motion to the line of scrimmage
- Four “downs” to advance the ball 10 yards
- Fair catch rule to protect punt returner

Those are the big differences between the Canadian and the American versions of football. There are other differences in the rules but overall the game is quite similar. In Europe, they play the American version of the game and the leagues follow the same rules that are played in the NCAA the previous season (it takes about that long for them to translate the rule changes and put them into effect.)

My entire football experience leading up to coming to Germany was in the Canadian version of football; this is a little unusual because even in Canada several leagues still play with the American version of the game. I never had the opportunity to play that version before coming to Germany because my high school league and the Canadian Interuniversity Sport league both play the Canadian version. Therefore when I showed up here I needed to get used to the changes quickly; it wasn’t too difficult since I already knew the rules and just had to get used to the differences.

Another big change that I had to undergo when I got here was the switch from offense, which I had played regularly for the last 5 years, to playing defense. I had played receiver at McGill University but also had some background playing safety and the Mavericks had decided that they needed help with their defensive secondary since they were a little short-handed until the rest of the imports arrived.

After those first few weeks on defense (including training camp), I was allowed to switch back to offense where I was more comfortable. The change wasn’t quite as smooth as I expected, but since I had been playing in a specific offense for so long and was used to a certain way of calling plays, formations and positions it took me a few practices to get used to the new method. I think one of the other differences was since I didn’t get to participate on offense during training camp I had a larger package to learn all at once. Overall, it went fairly smoothly but it just took a little longer than I expected and I don’t doubt that the switch from the Canadian football to the American version of the game contributed to this delay a little bit.

We are now in the preparation phase for our first regular season game. On Sunday May 9th, at 3pm (Central European Time), we play against the Magdeburg Virgin Guards; they have already played a regular season game so they have those first game kinks out of the way but we will be ready and hopefully start the season off right with our first victory on our home field.

The next few posts will most likely jump around between what I was doing for the first few weeks as well as keeping you updated with the football games that are happening at the present moment. Let me know if you want to hear about something specific.

Das Trainingslager

2010-05-02T22:35:00.006+02:00

The departure for training camp was a little bizarre for me since I was so new to this place and just getting adjusted to my surroundings in Monchengladbach. I knew that on a daily basis I would be back at the Hockeypark but other than that didn’t really know where I was going to be. I had no idea where this hostel was and what direction we were heading. Realistically that’s not a big deal but generally these are things I am used to knowing; at least having an idea where I was going to be so I had to completely let go of control and go along for the ride.

The hostel was located in area not far from Monchengladbach called Bruggen. Here is a link to the hostel so you can check it out; unfortunately I forgot to take many pictures but I did manage one picture of my room.

The next four days were spent completely immersed in football.

Every day we would wake-up at 7am for a team stretch outside, go inside for a special teams meeting, get maybe 30 minutes of extra time to do whatever (sleep usually), then breakfast and then another 45 minutes to relax (pre-practice power nap) and then board the bus for the 30 minute ride to the Hockeypark. Once at the field, we had a two-hour practice and then time for a shower and boarded the bus to go back to the hostel for lunch. After lunch we had unit meetings and time for a nap or physiotherapy for about an hour or so. We would then board the bus again and return to the field for our second practice of the day. After practice, we travelled back to the hostel and ate dinner followed by meetings and practice film analysis. We were in meetings until about 10:30pm. At this point, you had time for more physiotherapy, hanging out or what most of the guys did… back to bed before the cycle started over again.

This was our schedule for three days and then on the final night, we had a team barbecue, with steaks, salads and beer. Yeah that’s right beer! This was a surprise to me as well since I would have expected the barbecue to be after the offense versus defense team scrimmage the following day. This is not to say that the team got really drunk but it was just a casual beer or two but this was something new I had never experienced during a training camp. I had a coach back in Canada that once told the team I was playing on that “one or two beers are ok, but after that you are abusing your temple!” I guess they take that statement seriously in Germany. It was a new experience to have a beer during training camp and it may have been one of the best tasting beers I had in a long time; may have had something to do with the context. The last day of camp we were allowed to sleep for a couple extra hours and then we cleared out of the hostel and headed to the field to have our scrimmage; the culmination of training camp.

Die Altstadt

2010-04-30T16:55:00.004+02:00

After passing out and getting about 12 hours sleep which meant I was waking up around lunch time; my coach came by the apartment and told me to meet him around the corner for lunch with the team president. We ate lunch at a restaurant called the Groefen Konig.

My apartment is located in the center of Monchengladbach; this part of town is called the Altstadt or “old part of town”. In this area there are lots of nice little restaurants, bars, the main train station or Hauptbahnhof, banks and stores for shopping. Generally malls are only located in big cities like Dusseldorf, and even then, most shopping hubs are located on roads. The streets are more or less like malls instead of hallways with stores; the streets are lined with stores. For those of you familiar with Montreal it is very much like St-Laurent Boulevard but lined with cobblestones the whole way.

As I walked around the corner from my apartment into the “Altstadt”, I was greeted by and image that really rang home for me; this little corner brought back images in my mind of going out for walks with my family in Lahr (the city in Southern Germany, where my family was posted for 2 years when I was younger), The cobblestones were covered with people sitting out on the many patios or walking around just enjoying the nice weather and having a coffee or a meal at one of the many restaurants. I walked towards the restaurant where I was to meet my coach and team president and nearly walked right by them since I was looking all around taking in the surroundings.

Here are some pictures of the Altstadt.

We sat, talked and ate for about two hours. We discussed about football in Germany, playing for the Mavericks, how I ended up in Germany, the team president’s love for motorcycles more specifically Harley Davidson’s, what I thought of the practice from the previous night and what some of my expectations were. It was nice to learn more about the Mavericks and how football in Europe operates. I was also informed about some of my fellow imports from North America and when they would arrive. I was to be the only import with the Mavericks for the next two weeks and then gradually over the next couple weeks we would have a total of 6 imports. Technically, I am not an import because of my German passport but all the guys still call me one of the “Amis”, no not French for friends but instead short form for Americans. The large majority of players that come over to Europe to play football are from the United States so they call us “Amis” and if they refer specifically to the Canadians they just say Mounties. I guess the Vancouver Olympic committee got it right with all the stereotypes shown at the closing ceremony of the Olympics.

I also found out that two days later we would be heading off to training camp. We would still be practicing on our home field but we would be travelling back and forth from a youth hostel they had rented out for the 5 days. The coaching staff wanted to have the players together for a few days away from all other distractions except football. This was something new that was being done this year and since there were many new players to the team and that some of them would have to travel up to an hour to make it to practice this would also be a lot easier for them. They were also emphasizing the importance to get to know all the players and form that bond that football teams have.

The Monchengladbach Mavericks are made up of many different backgrounds as far as football is concerned. We have players and coaches that have played and coached in the now defunct NFL Europe, one player played in the NFL, imports like myself from North America that have either played in the CIS or NCAA, some players that have been developed in Germany through local teams and even some German players that were overseas on exchange for school and fell in love with the game.

Not only are the teams made up of different skill levels and football backgrounds but they all have different “daytime lives” some players are still students, some work full-time in various fields of employment, some have families and so on. John Grisham’s novel “Playing for Pizza” gives a very accurate depiction of what a European football team make-up would be and it is also true for the Mavericks.

Following the lunch, and for the next two days until we left for training camp my coach would drive me around Monchengladbach showing me the various places where I would most likely spend a lot of time; the gym, the cafeteria for my daily lunch, my new adoptive mothers house, the other import players apartments and of course we spent some time at the Hockeypark.

Das Ankunft

2010-04-28T16:24:00.006+02:00

Naturally before leaving Canada, my family was worried about how I would be picked up at the airport in Dusseldorf. They wondered whether my coach would recognize me, would he have a sign with my name on it like you see in the movies or would I just walk out and we would see each other and that was it. It wasn’t anything too exciting and realistically its probably best that way. I wasn’t expecting a sign since we had spoken on Skype so we both knew what we looked like and generally I don’t blend into crowds so I was most likely easy to recognize.

Some of you may be interested in knowing how I met my coach and how I heard about this organization or even football in Europe. I will explain the whole process later in another blog entry where I can explain how I ended up with the Monchengladbach Mavericks.

I pushed my cart out the arrivals door and I think the second face I saw was my coach’s. There was no drama, which was probably a good thing since I had no idea how many hours I had been awake, and all I knew was that it was 4pm in Germany and that this had been a very long day. Naturally, I was excited to finally meet my new coach face to face and get to know more about Monchengladbach but in reality my body just wanted somewhere to sleep and to continue the orientation 10 to 12 hours later when I felt awake.

Sometimes you get want you want and then the majority of the time you get something else. In this case, the rest of my first day in Germany was to swing by my new apartment, drop off my bags, grab a bite to eat (I was starving), and to go to the Mavericks practice.

During the 25-minute drive from Dusseldorf International Airport to Monchengladbach, my coach and our film specialist, who also picked me up at the airport, told me some of the history of Dusseldorf, about the Mavericks organization and about Monchengladbach the city or Gladbach as the locals call it. It was at this point that I also received a bit of a surprise; I wasn’t going to watch the practice, I was going to be participating as well.

Normally being told to participate in a practice isn’t a big deal; lace ‘em up and let’s go! This time however I was so tired, whether it was from the travel or a combination of the whole emotional rollercoaster and travel not too sure and it doesn’t matter my first practice for the Mavericks would be tonight whether I was “awake” for it or not.

After dropping off my bags and taking out my stuff for practice, we left for the Warsteiner Hockeypark. The Hockeypark is home to the Mavericks organization and now serves mostly for Mavericks football from the younger age groups up to the Senior Mavericks (my team) as well as some soccer and field hockey teams use it as well.

The Warsteiner Hockeypark was built for the Four Nations Field Hockey Tournament held in 2006. It has a capacity of 9000 spectators but during the Four Nations Tournament it held 14000 with the extra stands that were brought in. It is also used to host concerts when a stage is placed on the edge of one side and the field is also used as seating. This summer a few big artists from Germany and Europe will be appearing on stage at the Hockeypark, I hope to get to see at least one concert. A concert in a different language should be interesting. Check out the link to the Hockeypark website.

Here are a few pictures that I took of the Hockeypark.

Back to my first practice, I thought I may be walking into an “uppers practice” (players only wear helmets and shoulder pads, no heavy contact) but instead I was kind of but not really relieved to go to a conditioning practice. At least I knew I wasn’t going to be hit but instead my legs, which hadn’t really moved in many hours, were going to be pushed to their limit.

I wasn’t introduced to the team before practice so I showed up on the field did some stretching on my own, and tried to wake up and loosen my legs before the training would begin.

To shorten my recollection of the practice I will just say the practice ended with running about 40 flights of stairs. This was the hardest part of the practice for me since the players were calling out the number of flights of stairs left until the end of that set but in my very poor German all I understood was them counting down and then to my dismay the set would start over and the running would continue. Since I was the newest player and I did not want to be the guy asking when this hell was over, let alone attempting to do so in broken German, I kept quiet and just kept thinking of the bed that was awaiting me when the running was over.

At the end of the practice I was introduced to the rest of the team and coaching staff and was asked to say a few words; in my best-broken German, I tried to express my excitement to be joining the Monchengladbach Mavericks and to do my best to help our team reach our goal of winning a championship.

Die Immigration

2010-04-26T21:42:00.004+02:00

The last few days before my departure I spent as much time as possible with my friends and family; many of the discussions we had were related to my trip and what to expect.

Would my coach pick me up on time?
Would my luggage make it to its final destination?
How tough would the customs be? Will I need to speak to the customs agent in German since I am using my German passport?

We had some fun thinking of some worst-case scenarios but it couldn’t have gone any smoother. I didn’t even have to go through customs when I landed in London so I figured when I landed in Dusseldorf at my final destination would be when I would have to answer some questions.

The reason for your visit: Business or pleasure?
Where and how long are you staying?
Where were you on your trip?
How long were you gone for?

It was interesting because when we talked about the possible questions sometimes we forgot that the questions would be posed to a German citizen returning to Germany and not a Canadian visiting Europe.

Either way none of it even happened; I pictured myself going through customs like in the United States where they interrogate you and being “grilled” by questions like how come I didn’t have a departure stamp from Europe since this was the first time I was using my German passport and so on. The borders here are much more relaxed as some of you might know so once you are in Europe with a European passport they are quite relaxed. Walking off the plane I followed the signs for European nationals and handed the gentleman behind the counter my German passport. Not a single question, I said hello and by the time I had time to inhale he had already returned my passport and I was on my way.

One situation overcome, luggage was next.

Another challenge and topic of discussion leading to my departure was packing.
How do you pack your life in two 20kg bags? That was the question I kept asking everyone. I generally consider myself a light packer so never had any issues going on vacation or weekends away or even three weeks in Europe no problem.

When I left home for university, I will admit that I didn’t pack light on that move. My dorm room was packed and so were my apartments during my time in Montreal. My family was only two hours away and came to all my football games so along with them came food, blender or anything else that was needed. My roommate back then came from Western Canada and he would show up with two bags and did that for four years and never seemed to have a problem.

Here is a picture of me and my stuff first day in dorm at McGill University.

I guess I can pack for vacations no problem but when it comes to completely uprooting myself, I am not as talented. Do I really need to bring those three other pairs of shoes? That black suit in case I need to dress up or decide to get a job. How many sweatshirts? Sweatpants? T-shirts? Underwear? ... The list goes on and wasn’t making my packing any easier, add to that the fact that my most hated household chore is doing laundry I wanted to bring everything. Not going to happen on this trip.

I managed to get everything I thought I needed into three bags; each of them weighed about 17lbs just under the weight restrictions. I paid for an extra one (my logic was better to pay for the extra bag instead of having to buy everything brand new). I did bring that suit, those dress shoes, the dress shirts and ties but right about now doesn’t look like I will be getting a job so I should of brought some more sweatshirts or training gear instead.

Here I am with my three bags at the airport in Ottawa, already exhausted; little did I know what was ahead.

When I was younger my parents taught me that packing your luggage at home and weighing it with your own scale really eases the stress of travel. I have seen many people on the airport floor trying to rearrange their clothes and other things from one suitcase to another trying to making it all fit under the weight restrictions or even worse having to throw something out. I can’t imagine having to decide which friend or relative doesn’t get his or her present because I didn’t pack my suitcases properly. No wonder some people are all flustered and upset at the airport; that would never be a good way to start or end a trip.

Luckily, my luggage showed up and pushing my luggage cart piled high I walked out the arrivals gate hoping to find my coach waiting…

Das Flug

2010-04-24T14:14:00.006+02:00

Airports are a place where people can see many different emotions in their purest forms; joy, happiness and sadness are clearly visible on the faces of the people around you. When I was dropped off at the airport, my thought process and the emotions that I was experiencing were not quite what I was expecting. In my mind, I had already played out this event and I would have left my family all happy and excited about all the uncertainty of the adventure ahead. Instead I was thinking of the people I was leaving behind and whether I was abandoning them. It was a little depressing but I guess those thoughts are in my nature; I am a big brother and I deeply care for my friends and family. When I reflect back to the situation, this may have been my way of coping with my own fears, instead of focusing on the doubt and uncertainty that lay ahead I was thinking of others.

The first few minutes of my adventure were not going as easily as I expected but my mood quickly changed when I received some great news; I had been upgraded to first class for my flight from Ottawa to London, England. Thanks to some fantastic friends who were able to help in this regard, I was able to relax and enjoy the 7-hour flight in the privacy of one of the first class pods.

Anyone who has flown economy knows that when you board a plane and take that walk back to economy seating it is like rolling dice at a craps table. You have no idea how it will turn out.

Who will be sitting next to you? …
There are so many possibilities that could make your 7-hour stay in a tiny seat memorable so to speak.

I generally end up being one of the people you don’t want sitting beside you. You may ask why but the same reasons that made me a good football player make me not your most desirable neighbour on a plane. That 6’3”, 225lbs frame that I mentioned earlier doesn’t fit too well into those economy seats. Unfortunately, my long legs end up in the back of someone’s seat, in the aisle for everyone to trip over, my head may block the TV screen and if that’s not enough my shoulders are usually overlapping into the aisle and into the seat next to me. Comfortable flight for everyone involved.

It goes without saying that sleeping in that scenario is pretty hard but since this time I was in first class, it was a possibility. Well I thought.

In case you didn’t catch it in the previous post, I asked you to suggest meals and different foods to try while I am in Europe since I am a big eater and a food aficionado. Food in economy is generally expensive and terrible, or complementary and terrible but they put together a pretty nice spread behind those mysterious curtains.

The first couple hours of the flight were spent eating and drinking; champagne, salmon appetizer, mixed greens salad, a glass of wine, choice of main course (I had the AAA Beef Tenderloin with Yukon gold mashed potatoes but there were three other choices, Black Cod with fennel, Butter Chicken or Eggplant Lasagna), a cheese platter followed by a dessert of sliced fruit as well as ice cream and to end the flight just before landing I was also given a continental breakfast with croissants and yogurt.

As you can see most of my flight was spent eating and I think I may have ended up only sleeping for about 45 minutes. Rough start since I left Ottawa at night and I landed in London at 9 in the morning or so. It was a long first day in Europe.

Once I landed in London, I had to transfer Terminals but fortunately I had plenty of time and even though I stood in the wrong line for about 20 minutes I still had 2 hours to kill until my gate would be announced for my flight to Dusseldorf.

I spent the rest of my waiting time walking around the terminal window shopping the overpriced boutiques and reading some magazines I had brought along. I boarded my plane to Dusseldorf on time and it took off without any delays. The flight to Dusseldorf was spent in economy, but that flight was only about an hour long; no problem my new friends and I just had to “play nice”.

Check back soon to find out how it went at the German customs and immigration. Did I need to break out my terrible German? Did my luggage show up? So many things could go wrong in that last part of travel. Was there anything that I didn’t mention that you want to know about? Drop a comment below.

Das Anfang

2010-04-15T17:13:00.003+02:00

As I write the first post for my blog it has now been 3 1/2 weeks since I left Ottawa to come over here to Germany and start this new adventure. I have already experienced many new things and have felt a variety of feelings. Below is part of the story of how I came to end up in Germany playing football.

I grew up in a military family and the reality of being a "military brat" is frequent postings across Canada and even the World in some cases. Since I already had a few moves under my belt, the move to Germany was not a huge undertaking for me, the move wasn't the scary part; it was and still is what I have left back home in Canada.

When I was younger, I was fortunate enough to live in Southern Germany for 2 years on my Grandparents farm which was near to the Canadian military base in Lahr. The two years I spent living in Grafenhausen were a big motivating factor in my desire to return to Germany as an adult and to experience the lifestyle and culture offered in Europe.

While in my final year at McGill University, I was lucky enough to be offered a Canadian Football League contract with the Montreal Alouettes. This contract was a validation of all the hard work and time that my family, friends and coaches had put into developing me as a student-athlete. I use the term student-athlete because as far back as I can remember; school and sports were dependent on each other. I couldn't have one without the other; I wasn't allowed to play sports without being a good student and I didn't want to just be a student, so for me it was all or nothing.

Most people would say that just receiving that contract is a great honour and something to be proud of but just like any other athlete that wasn't enough for me I needed to make the team.

When I was in high school I was a two sport athlete, I couldn't decide what I liked more football or basketball. I spent all my free time year round practicing for both sports and playing at the highest level that I could. During the summer of 2003, I needed to make a decision what sport to play in University. That summer I was playing basketball for Carleton Ravens Head Coach Dave Smart on a traveling team he had assembled of players from Eastern Ontario. He was recruiting us to go play basketball at Carleton University and for the most part of the team, they ended up playing there and as their record shows winning quite a few Championships. We went to many tournaments in the United States and during that summer was when I realized that I needed to make a decision on which sport to play.

At that point I was being primarily recruited as a basketball player and since I did not have much football experience (I only played football for my high school team, no city or club team) most universities didn't have me on their recruitment radar. I had no idea what sport to choose, I had been playing high level basketball for quite some time and football was still very new to me but through many discussions with coaches, I decided that if I worked hard enough there could be a chance for me to play professional football.

During my time at McGill University, I focused and trained hard at becoming the best football player that I could become but I could never quite shake the desire to still play both football and basketball. Every year after the football season was over I would return to the basketball court and play intramural basketball. I knew some players on the basketball team and we had talked many times about the idea of me trying to join the basketball team once the football season was over.

I was able to resist the allure of the court until my fifth and final year at McGill. At the end of my fourth year at McGill, I was entered into the CFL draft and I was really hoping to get drafted or invited to a training camp as a free agent. Unfortunately neither happened, I was not drafted and I did not get an invitation to attend a training camp.

My goal for my last season at McGill was to get that contract and make a CFL roster but I also realized that this would be my last chance to play elite basketball. In Canada, the Canadian Interuniversity Sport is the governing body and they allow you to participate in university sport for 5 years. I decided that along with training as hard as I can to make the CFL, I would also approach the McGill basketball coach and see if he would be interested in giving me a shot at trying out for the basketball team once football was over.

I spoke to Coach Norman at the beginning of the football season during training camp and he liked the idea but told me to forget about it until football was over. He said that we would deal with the process of getting me back into basketball shape once the football season was completed. In high school, Coach Norman had recruited me to the Royal Military College where he was then coaching, but then he ended up accepting the coaching at position at McGill so I was very lucky to have a coach who had seen me play when I was still a basketball player.

About two weeks into my time with the basketball team, I was offered the contract with the Alouettes and once again I needed to make a decision between football and basketball.

I was always told as a kid that once you give your word to someone or if you start something you need to finish it, never quit something. I had already started practicing with the basketball team and I decided that I wanted to fulfill this dream of playing both sports during my university career. Some of you may think I made the wrong decision to not turn my focus solely to football and believe me many people told me the same thing but I could not let that dream go. I believe that cross training in sports is a huge asset to developing athletes and I firmly believe that some of my skill as a football player comes directly my years playing basketball and soccer.

The first practice with the basketball team was the best and worst feeling I experienced in a long time. When I graduated high school, I was a tall and lanky 6 foot 3 basketball player weighing 191 pounds but over the next 5 years with hours in the weight room and just filling into my frame I was now a 225 pounds football player. The training for football had made me a faster basketball player but I didn’t have the endurance needed for basketball. When we train for speed in football, we train to be able to run at our top speed for 10 seconds whereas in basketball you want to be able to run at your top speed or close to it for at least a 1-minute or 2, but most of the time even longer. As much as those first few weeks were tests for my cardio, the whole time I felt like a little kid, I think between my gasps for air and when I wasn't keeled over from exhaustion, I probably had the biggest smile on my face. I finished the season with the basketball team and then returned to solely focus on making the Montreal Alouettes.

I went to training camp prepared and satisfied with my training, I was confident that I could make the practice roster and work my way into the line-up eventually. Unfortunately, I did not make the team and was released and sent home.

Was I crushed? Yes.
Was I disappointed? Yes.
Were all those people right and I was wrong about playing basketball? I don't know but I am comfortable with my decision.
Would it have made a difference in the long run? Who knows?
Did I let my friends, family and coaches down? I felt like I failed them.

Those are some of the questions that run through your mind on the bus going home two weeks earlier than expected and your dream is over.

Well that dream was.

Dreams evolve and change, and things happen for a reason.

Soon after moving back home I decided that I would go play football over in Europe and go and see what football is like on a different continent. Experience a different culture, reconnect with some family here, travel, eat great food (taste great but not always great for you), make some new friends and take advantage of any opportunity that comes my way. This is how I ended up over here in Monchengladbach, Germany, a city of 250 000 people, learning to speak German again and playing football.

Leave a comment, mention a place to visit in Europe, some type of food to try, ask a question about the blog, football, Germany, anything.