The NFL… or American Football as we Brits call it… has been a big draw in this weekend’s sporting calendar. Why? Well, yesterday saw a proper NFL match (i.e. NOT a showcase event… but a bona fide league fixture) being held at Wembley Stadium. This is the first time that this has ever happened on somewhere that wasn’t American soil. Naturally, the highlights were on the box in the catchily titled NFL Highlights: Miami Dolphins vrs New York Giants (BBC Two, Sunday, 11pm). I sat down and watched it… and was left thinking what is all the fuss about?

If you have ever seen a documentary about American football, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s a glamorous sport. High impact, cheerleaders, wacky fans, big blokes saying funny things to camera, people throwing a rugby ball really really really far, the word grid iron, funny walks when celebrating touchdowns and people yelling things like 34 98 21 8 HUT HUT HUT! That’s what you’re led to believe anyway.

With this being quite a novel thing, and the majority of viewers watching (like me) out of idle curiosity, the Beeb did a quick run on the rules before the game. Basically, you get 6 points for a touchdown. If you score a touchdown, you get the chance to kick a conversion which is worth an extra point. Sounds simple? Well, it is. American football is a simple game (like all popular sports) made needlessly tricky by the way it’s played.

Where our football is three-dimensional, with the ball free to move in any direction it pleases, American football has only two options… to move forward a lot or to move forward very little. Clearly, American football is for those who love a good tactical battle as there is very little in the way a skill and guile. Occasionally, the quarterback (the bloke who throws the ball for a touchdown and someone who gets all the plaudits) does something quite nifty, but yesterday, they spent most of their time on their arses getting covered in mud and dropping the ball in the rain.

A part of me was thrilled at the fact that it absolutely honked it down with rain yesterday. Maybe now, our US cousins will see just how beautiful real football is. Deft moves and thunderbolt strikes can be performed in all conditions. It seems that, without astroturf pitches and a bit of sun, American football falls to bits.

The game is filled with ludicrous amounts of jargon which I managed to unpick just before the highlights finished. You hear of “rushing” and a team being “4th and down” which doesn’t really mean anything to me still. I wracked my brain to the days when I played the John Madden game on my Sega Megadrive. I still came up without a bean (which reminds me, Brian Dowling was on Family Fortunes this weekend, and when asked “Name a type of bean” he answered “Lesbian”). American football is almost like chess with a testosterone injection (chesstosterone!). It’s all about tactics and how many yards of progress you’ve made and very little to do with gameplay and skill.

Seeing as this was a big sporting event and therefore very important, it only proved one thing to me. American football will never be hugely popular in Britain. That I do know. Why bother with the NFL when you have two different kinds of rugby to watch? If you’re at all interested, the New Giants won.

[image: Getty]