For me this week has been dominated by sports, more specifically my confused and muddled attempt to understand the scary new lands of North American sports.
The most exciting sporting event of the weekend was the near miraculous win of the Toronto Maple Leafs over the Ottawa Senators for what must have been only the third time this season. For anyone not into hockey- that’s bad. Considering that Ottawa is my adopted Canadian hometown my joy at there defeat my come as a surprise but I was recruited to leafs mania by my Torontonian flat mate and can’t claim to regret the choice. The Leafs are the underdogs, no-one actually expects them to win so when they do the celebrations are fantastic. The Leafs have an obsessive and committed fan base that turn up religiously to every game to watch their team get destroyed, while truly believe that this year will be the year they win the first trophy in 40 years. This kind of support is brilliantly because it reminds me of home and the ‘Tartan Army’ which seems to suffer from the same delusion. Hockey is a sport I enjoy, it is fast paced and exciting, it requires lots of skill to play and looks fantastic. It’s a sport full of ‘characters’ and the game will frequently dissolve into violent fights in the middle of the ice with the puck lying forgotten.
This weekend also brought the most exciting American football event of the year- the Superbowl. This was my first introduction to the sport and I thought for sure I was in for a great evening; we had tickets for what claimed to be ‘the Greatest Superbowl Party Ever!’ at Oliver’s Bar and I was ready. When we arrived the place was packed with excited fans, banners adorned the walls and drinks were being served in football shaped glasses. We found ourselves seats next to one of the huge screens that were scattered round the bar and I prepared myself for the biggest game of the year. It was going to be a battle between two of the greats with the New York Giants and the New England Patriots and tensions were high as the patriots were on track for a record breaking perfect season.
After about half an hour of watching I knew for sure that I hate American football. The official game time for a game is one hour so after thirty minuets you would expect to be nearing half time. However American football is played in infuriatingly short bursts of ‘set plays’ that I won’t pretend to understand and last usually about ten seconds. This crazy broken play is further disrupted by advertisements which are shown every ten minuets so you feel as if you are watching adverts broken up by football instead of the other way round. Therefore the hour long game dragged on to almost four hours of boredom. About the only exciting thing about the game was that the Giants won seventeen to fourteen and destroyed the Patriots perfect season. I left the game with one certainty I would not be watching another. At least Hockey is bigger in Canada, there’s a sport I can enjoy.
