Redbrick

Brum overcome Aces in Xplosive encounter

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Written by Blayne Pereira

“We invited Lough­bor­ough this year, we thought they’d give us more of a bat­tle!” joked the announcer as the two teams were intro­duced. How­ever, for the sec­ond year run­ning, the Birm­ing­ham Lions shut out their xpLo­sION oppo­nents – this time defeat­ing the Lough­bor­ough Aces 9–0, although the per­for­mance of the vis­i­tors was a marked improve­ment on last year’s dis­play by the Bath Killer Bees, who drowned 29–0 in awful con­di­tions. Luck­ily, the rain stayed away this year, but the icy-cold winds remained.

The Aces won the coin toss and elected to receive the ball. What fol­lowed was a mam­moth defen­sive strug­gle between the teams, filled with numer­ous penal­ties. Lough­bor­ough fum­bled the ball on their first series, but man­aged to retain pos­ses­sion, although their three-and-out meant that the Lions’ offense, led by MVP Tris­tan Var­ney, was out on the field very early after receiv­ing the punt. Var­ney con­nected with Matt Lox­ton on his first attempted pass for a medium gain, before Sarunas Babonas burst through for a big pick-up on the ground. It seemed like the Lions had just con­tin­ued on from where they left off last sea­son – as National Cham­pi­ons. Unfor­tu­nately, John Zinkus fum­bled the ball after mak­ing a catch from Var­ney and, unlike the Aces’ fum­ble, this one was lost and the ball was turned over.

Six penal­ties, four of which were per­sonal fouls, com­pletely dis­rupted any chance the Aces had of get­ting into a rhythm on their ensu­ing pos­ses­sion,. The aggres­sive home defence seemed to have nailed an early sack on Aces quar­ter­back Nick Mell­ish cour­tesy of Bes­beck ‘BB’ Bessala and Dan Hamp­ton, but the play was called back due to a face­mask penalty. The Lions did man­age to reach Mell­ish on that drive though, with Will Watkiss get­ting to the QB on a cru­cial third-down play.

The Lions made full use of their run­ning backs on their next pos­ses­sion, with Babonas pick­ing up solid yardage on two car­ries, and Shane McNeill also chip­ping in. But McNeill then fum­bled, and lost, the ball after catch­ing the pass from Var­ney out of the back­field. The first quar­ter came to an end, with the game score­less, and both teams endur­ing three-and-outs to fin­ish it – and also an impres­sive punt from the Aces kicker who, despite fum­bling the ball, man­aged to down it inside the Lions 20.

Mell­ish found his run­ning back Adam Hope for a big pick up through the air, but false starts and another fum­ble (again, not lost) scup­pered any chance they had of build­ing momen­tum. Stu­art Payne then sacked Mell­ish to force the punt. Varney’s men started their next drive on their own nine-yard line, but they marched down the field impres­sively. Andy Wat­son appeared to be Varney’s pri­mary tar­get, and he caught a pair of impor­tant passes. He also missed a poten­tial recep­tion as well, but that was called as a per­sonal foul on the defence, helmet-to-helmet con­tact, and so fif­teen yards was picked up anyway.

Mean­while, Babonas was rack­ing up the yards on the ground as well, both straight up the mid­dle and on coun­ters. This triple threat put the Lions in a decent posi­tion for a shot at the end­zone, but the ball just seemed to slip out of Varney’s hands on a third-down play, and on the ensu­ing 4^th–and-7 play, there seemed to be a mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion between Var­ney and Zinkus and the pass landed incomplete.

As the two-minute warn­ing sounded towards the end of the first half, the Aces found them­selves going three-and-out once more, and Zinkus put up a spec­tac­u­lar gain on a punt return to rouse the crowd. Much to the Aces’ relief, it was called back due to a per­sonal foul. The Lions ran the ball on first down and Babonas was ago­niz­ingly close to break­ing that one final tackle and run­ning down­field. Excel­lent deep cov­er­age from the Aces saw both Zinkus and Seb Smythe fail to bring in deep throws and also gave the vis­i­tors an unlikely extra pos­ses­sion before the end of the half. Unsur­pris­ingly, noth­ing came of it, despite a well-worked delayed hand-off to Hope.

Per­for­mances from both the Birm­ing­ham Uni­ver­sity Dance Squad, and the Pussy­cat Cheer­lead­ers were on the half-time agenda, as well as a fine fire­work dis­play, much to the delight of the freez­ing cold crowd, some of which prob­a­bly just came for the half-time show alone.

The sec­ond half began and there was no change in the early events as the two defences ruled. Ross Wat­son picked Var­ney on his sec­ond pass attempt before BB recov­ered an Aces fum­ble on the first play of their drive. Three runs by Babonas, either side of a Var­ney pass to Lox­ton, was then met with a sec­ond inter­cep­tion from Var­ney, this time by Rich Cool­ing – as the quar­ter­back looked towards the endzone.

Then came the turn­ing point in the game, although the Lions were still on defence. Hav­ing inter­cepted the ball deep in their own ter­ri­tory, the Aces were then pushed back twice before the Lions forced a safety, putting up the first points on the board, 2–0.

Dan Con­roy, who plays for Great Britain, returned the free kick to the 37 as the Lions offense took to the field to try and increase the lead given to them by their defence. Babonas broke two tack­les to pick up some hard-earned yards, and did the same again just after a Varney-to-Zinkus play. The home QB dodged a bul­let just after, though, as a pass intended for Wat­son was almost picked off twice after it was tipped and deflected. An attempted fourth-down con­ver­sion came up short as Varney’s pass was just above Zinkus. Yel­low flags con­tin­ued to wreck the day for the Aces, who ended up with 3^rd–and-a-mile (i.e. over 20yards needed) after false starts and hold­ing penal­ties – despite runs from Hope and Terry Men­sah, as well as a screen pass.

An awful Aces punt that did not even reach mid­field set-up the Lions in per­fect field posi­tion, and they were finally able to take full advan­tage of it. Babonas picked up some nice yardage on a mis-direction play, but both Lox­ton and Smythe then failed to bring in catches. A hold­ing penalty on the Lions brought about some slight con­fu­sion. Ini­tially, it seemed like the vis­i­tors had accepted it, thus bring­ing up 3^rd–and-22, but they even­tu­ally declined it, which made it 4^th–and-12. The indif­fer­ent field posi­tion (i.e. not much to gain from a punt) meant that the Lions went for it, and Ben Brown was there to receive a huge catch from Var­ney to pick up a first down and send both the crowd wild, and knock the con­fi­dence of the Aces. McNeill picked up a few yards on a 1^st–and-goal play, but Brown missed the next catch, and Babonas picked up noth­ing from his. The Lions once again went for it on fourth-down and, this time, they picked up six points as a screen pass to Wat­son saw him cruise into the end­zone. Wat­son then con­verted his own Touch­down, after Zinkus man­aged to con­trol the high snap. And a clearly fired-up Wat­son then sent his kick-off through the back of the Aces end­zone for a touch­back, only for it to have to be retaken because of a rare false start.

The third quar­ter came to a close with the Lions lead­ing 9–0, and the Aces were once again dig­ging them­selves into a hole with more false starts. It then appeared the Lions recov­ered a fum­ble but a penalty, this time in favour of the Aces, reversed that and also gave them a fresh set of downs. Hope racked up a fine gain on the ground as he broke sev­eral tack­les, and there was also a hugely gen­er­ous rough­ing the passer penalty (15 yards), which meant that the Aces sud­denly found them­selves deep into Lions ter­ri­tory. But they bot­tled it. Hope had the ball strip-fumbled and the Lions had the ball once more.

Birm­ing­ham looked to kill the game off with the first play of the drive, but Smythe lost his foot­ing on an attempted deep route. Babonas con­tin­ued to impress on the ground, and also through short recep­tions. A drop from Zinkus resulted in Greg Free­man hav­ing to punt the ball away, which he did despite a wild-looking long-snap. Lions’ DB Mike Thomp­son put up what seemed to be a touchdown-saving tackle on the first play of the next pos­ses­sion, which even­tu­ally resulted in a four-and-out (the Aces again suf­fer­ing from penalties).

The hosts again looked deep early on, and it was Wat­son who this time just failed to bring the ball in as it scraped off his fin­ger­tips. McNeill picked up a first-down on a rush­ing play and then some more on the next one. Harry Fleet could not quite con­nect on a very well designed deep route, and McNeill’s screen there­after failed to bring up a first down. Free­man came on to punt, and almost nailed the per­fect kick. The pigskin just nudged the pylon over in the cor­ner of the field, and a touch­back was ruled.

Not too much hap­pened after that, as a clearly deflated Aces squad seemed to drop their heads in despair, and a cou­ple of back-ups were given run-outs for both sides – but mainly the home team. There were still a cou­ple of fine plays, Zinkus caught a bril­liant div­ing ball and stayed in bounds for a first down, and an Aces player also man­aged to catch a fine jump ball in the cen­tre of the field. But, as time expired, it was Greg Free­man who had the last word, pick­ing up an inter­cep­tion from Mell­ish as time expired.

It is dif­fi­cult what to make of this result. Birm­ing­ham steam­rolled almost every team they played last year, but then again there were many new faces in the squad while Lough­bor­ough had main­tained a large num­ber of play­ers from last year (some reports say up to 90% of their ros­ter was unchanged), which makes the visitors’ penalty count all the more star­tling. The Lions will be pleased to pick up the win, against a strong oppo­nent, despite hav­ing not played to any­where near the full poten­tial – the sign of cham­pi­ons, surely.

This is a thought echoed by team pres­i­dent John Zinkus, who said after the match: “As with all sports, the sign of true cham­pi­ons is the abil­ity to win matches when not play­ing your best. I think it’s a great sign that this group of play­ers has already demon­strated this. We all stuck together and the defence in par­tic­u­lar stepped up when it counted most, get­ting the safety to get us on the board.”

He also said of the per­for­mance: “The offence showed flashes of poten­tial and have to get more con­sis­tent if we want to repeat the National Title. How­ever, the most impor­tant thing is get­ting the win! We will cer­tainly improve as the sea­son pro­gresses and are still con­fi­dent of regain­ing the tro­phy.” Let’s hope this con­fi­dence can ensure pos­i­tive results as the sea­son progresses.

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This article was posted on November 9th, 2009 at 11:00 am.