Training
It’s 9pm on a Tuesday evening. It’s baltic, foggy, and 40 pad-wearing behemoths are crashing into each other. It can mean only one thing. (American) Football is back, and the University of Manchester Tyrants are looking to improve on their inconsistent last season.
The new season always offers optimism, but as with any university sport you never know how the recruitment of new players is going to go. Experienced players graduate, leaving huge gaps in the roster, and with a more niche sport like American Football, the impact is felt harder.
Last year was a tough year for Head Coach Mike Ripley, with the team having lost a tonne of experience and results dipping. The Tyrants eventually slumped to a season record of 2-4-1. He’s hoping the previous “rebuilding year” was a lesson for the team, and the now more experienced players can help propel the team to success.
Head Coach Mike Ripley gives the Tyrants a debrief after a game last season. Credit: @ Kasonde Katepa
Final year PhD candidate, Dom Williams has played for the Tyrants since his first year of university and Coach Ripley would love to see him finish his time at Manchester with a deep run into the playoffs. Others in the team have earned call-ups and trials for the Ireland, England, and Great British squads, so clearly enough talent is present in the team to go to the postseason; it’s all about implementing come game-time.
Before the intense two-hour training session, full of drills and a practice game (scrimmage), the team break out the pencils and notebooks for a 45-minute session learning the playbook: The X’s and O’s.
Whilst the sport is known for its brutality, this is perhaps the hardest gap to bridge for new players. In just a few short weeks they need to get up to speed and know these plays by a single obscure name (Wakanda was my favourite) and execute them under pressure.
Coach Ripley has a somewhat unique approach to play calling too. “We try to be the smart team of the league,” he tells me, as the team begin their warm-up lap. He’s referring to analytics, a feature that dominates American sports, particularly baseball, but hasn’t quite won over sports enthusiasts this side of the Atlantic – except maybe the xG Merchants in our native football.
On his phone, he goes through the playbook: each play has a percentage chance of success on each down. The theory is that come game-time, these percentages will overrule the emotion on the sideline and translate to points on the board. Is he Manchester’s answer to Moneyball? Ultimately the results will decide, but his enthusiasm for the sport is infectious.
This positive attitude has helped the Tyrants through some of the more trying times in their recent history. Under the lights of the Armitage Centre, it’s strange to think that this team was once homeless, playing their home games across Wilmslow Road at Platt Fields Park and at various other makeshift pitches across South Manchester.
The launch of the AU system in 2021 brought a wealth of positive changes for the team and enabled them to start afresh post-COVID. At one point they had just nine helmets for the entire squad. Today, with some help from the local British American Football Association (BAFA) team, The Manchester Titans, everyone has the equipment they need to play, and the team is in a much healthier position.
The natural instinct would be to think that Manchester Metropolitan’s football team, the MMU Eagles, would be the natural grudge match for the Tyrants, but not so. The coaching staff for both teams are well acquainted and some even play together for the previously mentioned Manchester Titans. Instead here there is more animosity between the other dinosaur-branded team in the British University & Colleges (BUCS) Northern Division 1, the University of Liverpool’s Raptors.
In recent years the match has been dubbed “the Dino Bowl”, and as if to give the opening game of the season extra weight, it’s against the Raptors. No easing themselves gently into the season then.
Match Day
No easing themselves in at all. It’s deep into the fourth quarter and the Tyrants are down by 14 points, the Liverpool Raptors tear through the offensive line and sack the quarterback, it’s fourth down. The heavens open. Confusion reigns on the sidelines and the coach is forced to take a timeout. The punter finally gets into position, receives the slick ball, kicks it straight into the onrushing defender and the ball trickles into the endzone for a safety, and the Tyrants are facing their first defeat of the year.
This series of events encapsulates a frustrating Tyrants opening day loss to rival dino-themed team the Liverpool Raptors, with the score ending 6-22 in favour of the away side. Confusion, missteps, and missed opportunities plagued the team all game. The Tyrants showed some promise on the defensive side of the ball and managed to keep themselves in contention for most of the game. But the offence really struggled to find their rhythm and just couldn’t connect on passing plays when it really mattered.
Chants of “Whose House? Our House!” from the home side tried to drown out the grunts and shouts of the travelling Raptors in the pre-game auditory warfare. But the Raptors looked the more physically imposing side in the warm-up and outnumbered the Tyrants too with a much larger playing squad.
An opening drive interception by the Tyrants gifted momentum to the travelling team. Undeterred the defence roared onto the pitch but the short field position gave the already raucous Raptors the opportunity to come away with maximum points. The manner of their opening touchdown, a field goal fake, confused everybody. An errant whistle, either from a hockey game one pitch over, or an official on the field, stopped the defence in their tracks and the opposing team waltzed into the endzone. The Tyrants’ sideline was furious, but the touchdown stood.
The Raptors would score again on their next drive after some big chunk plays ate up a large amount of the field. The touchdown came from a handoff to the running back who managed to weave his way through the flailing defence for another six points. A failed point after left the score at 13-0, hardly the ideal start to the new season. The Tyrants’ sideline was glum, the optimism I’d seen in their training session extinguished in less than a quarter.
After the opening plays, the defence rapidly improved and for the rest of the game did well to limit the Raptors’ offence. They did everything in their power to claw some momentum back for the team. Two ‘3 & outs’, a turnover, and a blocked point after weren’t enough to spark some life into the tepid offence.
Liverpool’s quarterback, Connor McFarland, was a persistent problem for the Tyrants, coming alive just as his team’s plays were breaking down. His ability to improvise with his legs punished the Tyrants, who just couldn’t get to grips with him. McFarland almost had the play of the day when he galloped through the holes in the Tyrants’ defence 80 yards for a touchdown only for it to be wiped off because of a penalty.
The offensive highlight of the afternoon for the Tyrants came on their third possession. Aided by a number of offside penalties, they marched down the field and their best performer on the day, running back Ed Shelley, ran it into the end zone for the score. It was the only bright spot on a pretty miserable day for the offence who just couldn’t string together enough plays.
The Tyrants offence – Credit: Luke Hewitt @ The Mancunion
There is promise in Manchester’s offence as the touchdown drive showed brief moments of quality. Wide receiver Max Simmons looked a threat and the tandem of running backs, Ed Shelley and Joshua Welsh can definitely cause problems for defences. Work needs to be done on the tempo of the offence, and this extends to the coaches too. Far too often it would take an age for the play to be communicated from the sideline, and allowing the opposing defence to rest in between plays.
An absolute washout of a fourth quarter killed off any hopes of a late comeback from the Tyrants, who were outplayed on the day. The team will need to put the loss out of their minds quickly and prepare for the next game against more scouse opposition, Liverpool John Moores Fury, who suffered a heavy first week loss, 38-0 against the Leeds Gryphons. Two wounded teams looking to get their first win of the season, let’s just hope there’s no rain.
